Grover Norquist and Harnessing the Leave Us Alone Coalition

Grover Norquist: First Identify the Issue that Motivates a Voter?

Grover Norquist the well known President of Americans for Tax Reform, established at the request of Ronald Reagan with whom he worked speaks with Robin Koerner on this week’s episode of The Blue Republican. Mr. Norquist is an expert of the pragmatics of electioneering for smaller government, building what he calls “The Leave Us Alone Coalition” – which, he explains, is the most electorally efficient way to get pro-liberty policies enacted.

The discussion also speaks to building a Permanent Majority Coalition for Liberty, how winning at the ballot box depends on letting voters tell pro-liberty candidates what their vote motivating issue is with a plurality of voters holding one or two at most. Grover also explains that a majority of Americans have a “leave me alone” position (i.e. a libertarian position) with respect to the State. Libertarians and Reaganite conservatives need to find that issue for people in various sub-cultures (small businessmen, homeschoolers, gun-rights advocates, members of several religious faith communities etcetera, agree with them, can win their vote on that issue – and then shut up, with Mr. Norquist positing that is  the trick to targeting the particular issue in which a voter invests his identity. As Robin often says, at some level, all politics are the politics of identity. Grover elucidates why this is indeed the case, and how this fact is used both effectively and ineffectively by different political groups.