More on Norquist and Colorado

Earlier I reported that Colorado had overturned the Grover Norquist inspired TABOR starve the government tax plan. Well over at TPM Cafe Ed Kilgore has more and agrees it's big. The end for Gro

TABOR, a long-time conservative cookie-cutter idea that first reached fruition in Colorado, is sort of the ultimate reflection of the starve-the-beast philosophy of Grover Norquist: taxes and spending must always go down, never up, no matter what's going on in the real world.
And TABOR's enactment represented Grover's big-time clout in state politics around the country. Other than trying to intimidate state and local officials into naming everything possible after Ronald Reagan, Norquist's major outside-the-beltway project has been to intimidate Republican state legislators and governors into a posture of never, ever, considering new revenues in budget decisions. Grover's Rules especially prohibited any effort to close off tax loopholes created to benefit the corporations sitting at his table those famous Wednesday meetings in Washington where the GOP's Theocrat/Mammon/Hack coalition met to get its weekly talking points.

Is it over for Grover?

But the whole Grover Machine is beginning to fall apart. Aside from his deep implication in every aspect of the Casino Jack Abramoff scandals, Grover's clout in state politics, even among Republicans, is visibly crumbling, leading him to become not a uniter but a divider in GOP ranks. The TABOR modification initiative was backed by Republican Governor Bill Owens, who not that long ago was being widely touted as a potential presidential champion of the Conservative Movement. But for all his efforts, Grover could not defeat the heretic.

Like I said this is big. It looks like a TABOR law in California will also go down to defeat next week.

Grover Norquist