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You're spot on.
I think Norquist's success is as much of a surprise to him as it is to us.
If you look at his writings, I think the key here is that he honestly wanted the Democrats (who were in power when he started) to come up with alternatives to judges making laws, runaway law suits, etc. rather than just sit by and let the whole system be torn down as it has been.
Norquist reminds me of a successful magazine. The success of a magazine is dependent upon how well it can niche out a market suitable for particular advertisers (representing a majority of a magazine's income).
Norquist was able to use his 'frames' to create a pro-rich/corporate agenda which would otherwise be palatable through appeals to 'fairness', 'the founding fathers', 'liberty' etc... From there, he was able to get financing to keep his work going (along with the Heritage Foundation, Cato, AEI, et al) from the rich who would rather finance political think tanks than pay taxes (think tanks are otherwise tax deductible, although they pay handsome salaries to their pundits, contributions made to them is treated the same as money given to the Red Cross).
The reason I'm going on so much about him is that I think he and his ilk are a greater threat than Bush.
I think that because you can get rid of Bush, but as long as the "engine" of the "conservative" philosophy remains alive and well, the destructive seeds they sow will forever be sprouting weeds.
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