Debating Grover Norquist, America's Leading Fake Populist

[FarCenter]

By David Sirota

June 16th, 2008 - 9:25am ET

SEATTLE - This week on my national book tour, I had the opportunity to debate conservative leader Grover Norquist on KUOW - Seattle's NPR affiliate. The topic of the debate was my new book, THE UPRISING, and specifically the rise of populism in American politics. You can listen to the debate here - it begins about half way into the interview.

Norquist, one of the architects of the original conservative uprising of the 1980s and 1990s, is a good indicator of where the conservative movement is today. As you can hear, the Right is angry with the Bush administration for not being more conservative on a whole host of issues - and you can sense from Norquist how ideologically bankrupt conservatives really are today.

For a generation or so, the Right has dynamically adapted its reactionary ideas to sound like a populist, anti-Establishment, for-the-little-guy agenda. But thanks to all the crises we now face from those ideas - an energy crisis, stagnant wages, national security catastrophes, a global warming emergency - it has become much easier for progressives to unmask the Right as what I called Norquist: Fake populists.

The concept of fake populism is an important one as we move into the superheated general election campaign.

continues at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/debating-grover-norquist-americas-leading-fake-populist

[Mojambo]

1. Norquist has been at the top of my personal Worst Person in the World list for years. n/t