Jeb Bush will bow to his party's wishes and join other Republican presidential hopefuls in promising to never raise taxes, says the influential author of a Taxpayer Protection Pledge that has become a bulwark of GOP politics.
"At some point he will make that commitment," Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist told "Newsmax Now" co-host John Bachman on
Newsmax TV Tuesday, confidently predicting that
the former Florida governor will reconsider withholding his name from the pledge.
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"This is not just a personal issue," said
Norquist, who issued the document 29 years ago and has seen it come to define almost every Republican candidate for federal and statewide office.
"This is now the Republican Party's position," said Norquist. "The Republican National Committee endorsed the pledge and called on all candidates at all levels to make that commitment. We have 90 percent of Republicans in the House and Senate who have signed the pledge. This pledge is endorsed by President Reagan."
Pledge signers in the 2016 presidential election cycle include Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — a Bush protegé — and two of Rubio's fellow Senate freshmen: Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Bush hasn't formally entered the race, but is expected to soon and is already campaigning and fundraising like he's in.
Norquist said Bush would do well to learn from his father's history as a White House candidate and a one-term president. George H.W. Bush "would never have been elected" if he hadn't taken the pledge in his 1988 primary battle with Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, said Norquist.
"He was losing to Dole until before he took the pledge and Dole did not," he said. "Then he was 14 points behind [Democratic presidential nominee Michael] Dukakis before [he] said, 'Read my lips, no new taxes.'"
Bush broke the pledge in office and lost his re-election bid in 1992.
"If my Dad threw away a perfectly good presidency, I would honor him by learning to avoid that mistake," Norquist wrote on Twitter in February.
The next family member to run for president, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, signed the pledge in 1999 en route to winning two terms in the White House.
Norquist said the pledge also underscored recent budget battles in Washington — "particularly because in 2011 and 2012, the pledge made it easier for the Republicans to hold together and win a $2.5 trillion spending restraint and the sequester cap" from President Barack Obama and the Democrats, he said.
"We took spending from 24 percent of GDP down to 20 percent because we refused to allow tax increases as part of that deal," he said. "The pledge has been very helpful in reducing government spending."
He said the flip side of the no-taxes pledge is a promise to seek to shrink government and make it function on a smaller scale.
"If you don't pledge opposition to higher taxes, you never get government reformed," said Norquist. "If a politician won't make the commitment against higher taxes, he's telling you when there's a problem, he's not going to reform the government, he's going to raise taxes.
"That's what Democrats do and the good news is, almost all the Republicans have made that commitment," he said. "At the end of the day, Jeb Bush will as well."
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