'Raising taxes doesn’t solve the overspending problem, it is a distraction,' Norquist says. | JAY WESTCOTT/POLITICO Grover: Mitt painted as 'poopy head'

Grover Norquist said on Monday that President Barack Obama won reelection by portraying Mitt Romney as a “poopy-head.”


“The president was elected on the basis that he was not Romney and that Romney was a poopy-head and you should vote against Romney,” Norquist, an anti-tax crusader, said on CBS’s “This Morning.” “[Obama] won by two points, but he didn’t make the case for higher taxes and higher spending. He kind of sounded like the opposite.”

The president campaigned for reelection on ending the Bush-era tax cuts for incomes above $250,000, and has said he would veto any extension of those rates, which would likely be part of any deal to avert the fiscal cliff. Obama also said tax hikes would be needed as part of a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, which would include spending cuts.

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But during a series of appearance on morning TV shows, Norquist, the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, tried to put the brakes on any deal that would include tax rate increases. At one point, he mischaracterized Obama’s positions.

“Obama is not interested in taxing the rich,” Norquist said on CBS. “He admits there’s no money there. He runs a $6.7 trillion debt assuming he raises taxes on high-income people.”

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Norquist said Obama actually wanted to target the middle class with energy taxes.

Earlier this year, Obama proposed a rule named after investor Warren Buffett, which would require the rich to pay more in taxes.

Norquist also defended the group’s anti-tax pledge and made his case that boosting rates wouldn’t address the bigger issue facing Washington policymakers: out-of-control spending.

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“The challenge is, the problem we have is the last four years of overspending,” Norquist said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.” “Raising taxes doesn’t solve the overspending problem; it is a distraction. We ought to be looking at undoing the damage of the last four years and reining in spending, not raising taxes.”

The bulk of Republicans in Congress have signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, promising not to vote for tax increases. When asked on CNN’s “Starting Point” whether that pledge ties lawmakers’ hands when it comes to negotiations, Norquist said that that promise is one that lawmakers’ made to the American people, not to him or his organization.

“They made that commitment when they ran for office … to the people of [their states],” he said. “You can keep that commitment by focusing on the problem; the problem is too much spending; the problem is not that the peasants aren’t sending enough money to Washington. We need to reduce the total spending.”

He added that while more revenue is needed, it can be generated by putting more people back to work.

“Boehner was very clear he wants to increase revenues,” Norquist said of House Speaker John Boehner. “So do all of us who want economic growth. It is not a tax increase to put more Americans at work. If our recovery was growing as well as Reagan’s did, there would be 10 million more Americans at work. We need to go back toward Reagan lower marginal tax rates and grow the economy.”

Norquist’s comments come as a number of Republicans have signaled a willingness to compromise on taxes. Boehner has toed the line, declaring he would accept higher revenues only from a version of tax reform that cut rates. Most notably, influential conservative pundit Bill Kristol broke ranks and said Sunday that the GOP should be open to a “serious debate” on the subject.

“The leadership of the Republican Party and the leadership of the conservative movement has to pull back, let people float new ideas. Let’s have a serious debate,” Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, said on Fox News. “Don’t scream and yell if one person says ‘You know what? It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.’ It really won’t, I don’t think.”