this offer ends july 31st. >>> in tonight's "rewrite," the worst thing that could ever happen to grover norquistemocrats to "rewrite" their legislative strategy that would ruin grover's life's work and free every republican in congress from the dictatorial rule of grover. the new democratic strategy that will completely destroy grover's power is simply these three words -- off the cliff. congressional democrats should all get buttons made saying "off the cliff." like, say, this one! put bumper stickers on their cars saying, "off the cliff!" so that when republicans see the democratic cars in the house and senate garages they'll start to think, hey, may be the democrat s are finally serious this time. now, i know it sounds crazy to go off a cliff, it sounds reckless, it sounds down wright reckless to have a republican strategy that just says, let's go off a cliff. that was the tea party strategy in the house on the debt ceiling. they were willing to go off the cliff by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, but the cliff i'm talking about is deferent. this time, the only response thing to do is go o

some of the productive conversations that my republican colleagues have been having have led grover norquistts when it comes to taxes. well, i hope these impure thoughts continue. if norquist is mad, and i mean that in the angry sense of the word, then we must be on the right track. i also think many republicans are starting to realize something very important. on january 1, if we have not gotten a deal, grover norquist and his pledge are no longer relevant to this conversation. >> that is so thelma. i hope those impure thoughts continue. grover norquist has done a lot of unwise things in his life as a lobbyist, most recently calling a republican senator a liar, but grover has done nothing more unwise, nothing more unsafe than crossing senator thelma. >> grover norquist, by the way, was kind enough to wish my luck on the super committee by telling reporters that the lady from washington doesn't do budgets. >> oh, grover. you should have known that bad things happen to guys who cross thelma and louise. joining me now are two guys who would never cross thelma and louise. the former chief econo

i happen to have tumbled upon this because i wound up renting space from grover norquist for seven long years and witnessed firsthand what i'm about to show you in terms of the influence operation that began during that period, went at the george w. bush 2000 campaign and then the bush administration, again, setting the precedence in terms of personnel, policy and practices that are metastasizing today. next slide. another gang of six. you've already been introduced to abdel rahman al marudi. let me go through some photographs of the next. next slide. well, this is al marudi with governor bush and next slide. this is khaled saffuri, his right-hand man and nihad awad who runs one of the most aggressive muslim brotherhood fronts c.a.r.e. in the summer of 2001. this is another convicted terrorist running at the time of this photograph in march of 2000 the palestinian-islamic jihad organization. next slide. muslim al sadiqquey, the imam presenting the president a koran in the white house shortly after 9/11. next slide. this chap. he worked in the white house for most of 2001. he was the mus

meet grover norquist.x reform, whose mission statement is, "the government's power to control one's life derives from its power to tax. we believe that that power should be minimized." that's right, the most powerful man in america who does not sleep in the white house is losing it. he is being driven crazy by republican senator tom coburn, who decided to do these two things in this order. number one, not run for re-election. and number two, go to war with grover norquist. i have praised senator coburn's choice to take on grover in this space a couple of times before. and today in "the new york times," coburn wrote an op-ed piece attacking grover once again. then grover made the mistake of responding in an interview with the hill, in which he inadvertently revealed just how batcrap crazy he is now. here is how he explained his fight with coburn to the hill, word for word. i defy you to make any sense of this at all. "it is like a couple that is having a fight, and one of them tries to drag a third party in

the massive military or republicans able to break their promise to multimillionaire lobbyist grover norquist in order to protect their defense industry donors and all across america record high temperatures and a lack of rain are causing a nightmare for our nation's farmers and our agriculture industry just how badly has the largest drought in decades hurting our food supply and is this a glimpse of things to come in the age of global warming. you need to know this when you mention these small handful of wealthy families and pretty much own to el salvador in the reagan eighty's you often think of the infamous death squads that their right wing military government supported as tom brokaw reported in one thousand nine hundred eighty three on n.b.c.'s evening news the death squads strike could anyone most destructive working for the gross or sympathizing with them even when friends are involved most of the victims are the sons and fathers of the poor the children and husbands of these women who marched recently against gadhafi. these people routinely used rape and murder including that of child

it's interesting, though, you know, i remember when he was going after grover norquist, and that was roundly condemned by a number of conservatives. i mean, there wasn't much there, but he was alleging that grover norquist was trying to get the muslim brotherhood infiltrating the american conservative movement. >> yeah, he's been going after grover norquist for a decade. he said he submitted to sharia law. he's been driven out of the elite in the conservative movement in addition to cpac and the conservative union kboyuaun which includes john bolton. really staunch conservatives. he was kicked out of a strategy lunch, another big con receiver tif stalwart here. there's kind of an interesting dynamic, the tea party versus the accomplishment while he's persona nongrata, people like bachmann and west and other congressmen still listen to him and he has their ear. the republican of the senate used to sit on frank gaffney's board. so he still has a lot of juice in some aspects of the party despite being roundly condemned by other parts of it. >> he's been on the show before, people have a

there wasn't much there, but he was alleging grover norquist was trying to get the muslim brotherhood infiltrating the american conservative movement. >> absolutely. he's been going after governor norquist for almost a decade. he doesn't care. he'll go after republicans, he will go after republicans, democrats. he went after bush administration officials. he said the head of the cia had submitted to sharia law. so she is really shameless and he's been driven out of the elite in the conservative movement in addition to cpac and the american union board, which includes john bolton and the head of the nra. real staunch conservatives. he was kicked out. but there's kind of an interesting dynamic of the tea party versus the establishment. where while he's persona nongrata other congressmen still listen to him. he still has their ear. even some senior officials like jon kyl, the number two republican in the senate, used to sit on frank gaffney's board. so he still has a lot of juice in some aspects of the party, despite being roundly condemned by other parts of it. >> i should point out, he

grover norquist's wife is a muslim.egations saying it's completely indefensible, there's nothing else to say. does it, frankly, help when people have a personal experience with prejudice or themselves have been on the receiving end of a witch hunt, that they are much more empathetic? we know this as people of color or minorities who struggle against the main stream lack of a kind of personal story and narrative, does this help? >> absolutely. look, there have been stories about for instance, elected officials even here in the state of new york who switched their vote on gay marriage because they had gay neighbors and their kids were being raised in a house full of love and that changed their position. and we saw this on people who had one position on interracial couples until they had a half black, half white grandkid. it's really refreshing for once to see our politics united against hate for a change as opposed to united in hate. and i center to say, usually congresswoman bachmann is on my list with alan keyes and oth

grover norquist is full of hot air and not much else. congratulations, president. well. >> greg: did you say read my lips? i won't raise taxes? isn't that the same president? >> dana: senator coburn in oklahoma has an on-ed saying that the left is obsessed with grover norquist so they take their eye off the ball like entitlement reform. >> bob: you can't take your eye off of him because it's tough to find him. he's only 4'2". >> kimberly: bob. here is something we knew all along was true. i.q. expert james flynn and he determined that women closed the i.q. gap. let's talk about surpassing it actually. >> eric: wait a minute. >> kimberly: scoring higher than men. "telegraph" newspaper so obviously very true. women outnumber men on college campus, hold more advanced degrees than the counterpart.

how many people in the auence do not know who grover norquist is?raise yourands if you've never gr nis a iet. ,th mterful man in the country today. why do i say that? well, he's the one who has this organization that forces people to sign no-tax, no-revenue pledges. matyve sd, 4menrehan a nars -- enough to stop any legislation from occurring by filibuster -- have also signed. so grover norquist controls the country. heliterally controls the cotry. dve nisnoay anything wrong with being small, but he's a little guy who looks like the nerd in college -- [laughter] and iwould anticipate if he was behind a curtain, he would be exactly like the wizard of oz. [lghter] nobody everoted gover rq, dy veim y onbe t powerful, and he's a fraud. but he's a fraud that controls soimpactfully that when t corn and three other republicans signed the sowlepagng renbyimin xoolerover norquist said you violate your pledge, because eliminating a tax loophole is the equivalent of raising taxes. and tom coburn, who i probabl disagree with on 70% of stuff, as an-. tov uioic it

wayne lapierre is not a credit hog like grover norquist. nti-tax lobbying muscles publicly. he loves calling senators idiots. he loves taking credit for preventing any sensible tax policy in this country. wayne is a old school. wayne lapierre follows the old lobbyist playbook of never publicly taking credit for anything. every time an american mass murderer uses the right that wayne has preserved for any one in this country, including al qaeda and homicidal maniacs, to buy insane amounts of ammunition, and then that mass murderer gets huge headlines, wall-to-wall cable news coverage, and comments from the president, wayne lapierre never takes credit for any of that. never. wayne always does a kind of, ah, shucks, modesty thing and says, if i couldn't make sure that that mass murderer could get all those bullets, he would have used something else to kill all those people. talk about modesty, huh. maybe some of our mass murderers would have found another way to kill a lot of people, but we'll never know, will we? because wayne has just made it

that is what the grover norquist pledged duster republicans. 98% of them have signed that pledge.t says that you cannot close one tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit. you cannot eliminate one taxpayer subsidy for an oil company to reduce the deficit. they have taken the whole issue of revenue off the table. every bipartisan group that has looked at our deficit challenge says that you have to a mix of cuts and some revenue in closing some of these loopholes and asking folks at the top to pay little more. republicans are saying we're not going to ask people making a lot available more to reduce the debts it. so they want to hit everybody else through the budget process. i mentioned seniors on medicare and children getting an education. the problem has been their refusal to take a balanced approach to cutting the deposition. as the president said, let's agree on what we can agree on. if republicans really believe we should provide tax relief to people under $250,000 a year, let's do that right now. if you want to argue about the other part later, providing tax breaks

the circumstances change and you can't be wedded to some formula by grover norquist.er norquist, anyway, which is fighting words. >> i was expecting w. to say that. it was kind of cool, it was neat, it was massively rad being president. the interesting thing is as soon as a republican gets out of power, out of the white house, it seems that the next generation comes along and really mystifies them. george h.w. bush was mystified by the neocon hold on his son going into the iraq war. ronald reagan of course would be drummed out of the party for suggesting a 15% tax rate was too low. so there's a sort of evolution -- >> mythology is a different story. i think you're absolutely right there. this is this kind of nostalgia that is built upon corruption and amnesia. what we have to do is hold steady the notion that these guys were doing -- and lady -- were doing great things for america. we've got to deny every index that they were horrible, then we've got to reinvent them as great icons who are out of step with the bad republicans. >> i don't think the public is embracing

anti-tax activist grover norquist. "washington post" associate editor bob woodward and democratic strategist hilary rosen. also this morning, a few minutes with bob costas of nbc sports, on the penn state sex abuse scandal. after this week's devastating report about who knew what, and when. >>> good morning. well you knew it was going to get nasty and here we are in this presidential fight. really the choice is by the fall, is this going to be a campaign that turns on the obama economy? or mitt romney's business record? a week ago we were talking about a bad jobs report for the president. this week, because of the obama team going on the offensive, it's all about romney's bain record. and the president is staying with it on the campaign trail yesterday in virginia. >> he invested companies that have been called pioneers of outsourcing. i don't want a pioneer in outsourcing. i want some insourcing. >> the response now, the adviser of the romney campaign ed gillespie. good to have you back. >> thanks for having me. >> so

they said no because 98% of all republicans have signed this pledge to grover norquist saying that not one penny of additional revenue can be raised for the purpose of reducing the deficit or for the purpose of preventing the sequester from taking affect. >> eliot: grover norquist perhaps the most powerful person in the republican party, he calls closeing loopholes absolutely reserve in the face of lodge be. thethe other day day to disclose who their contributers were, something that the republican party pretended they were for but then went against it. moving this through the house and getting it on the record opposing this idea. >> that hypocrisy is mirrored in the house. as mitch mcdonnell talked about the importance of disclosure, and now he has done a 180. john boehner of the house was for disclosure now he's against it. i filed a discharge petition that says we will allow the full house to vote on the disclosed bill which has been introduced over here in the house republicans have not even allowed a hear approximating. here is a bill to promote transparency and opens. no hearing

. >> john, do you think that republicans realize that grover norquist has led them out on a limb here because a bloomberg poll found that almost 7 in 10 americans favor raising taxes on those earning more than a quarter million. >> right, but you have a bunch of people on capitol hill who are enthralled of a primary challenge coming from the right and a lot of people on the hill are far right. you can only imagine the kind of challenge they would get if they did not adhere to the pledge to never raise taxes ever at any point. and this other thing to keep in mind, the president's trying to keep the middle class tax cuts in place and one of the reasons why he wants to do that, one, bring relief to the middle class, but also, this was all caught up in the conversation about reducing the deficit. if you look at the total cost of those bush tax cuts for everyone, you could wipe out a good chunk of the deficit this country has. >> indeed. joan, romney is hitting the president for not understanding how the private economy works. take a listen to this piece of sound first. >> do you believe t