The feud between the American Conservative Union's Grover Norquist and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma about whether to to raise any taxes at all in order to balance the budget has gone someplace I didn't really expect it to:
The tensions between Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform and Coburn's office have intensified, with each side sending the other accusatory letters claiming to be the true conservatives.
Coburn charges that the tax pledge, as interpreted by Norquist, is inflexible, and Coburn's spokesman now labels Norquist the "chief cleric of sharia tax law."
"If we don't do something, what we've done is put the country at risk," Coburn said in an interview.
Norquist says Coburn and others are and flirting with political suicide.
"Why would you elect a Republican Senate if they just sat down with Obama and raised everyone's taxes?" Norquist asked.
Norquist has long been the focus of conspiracy theories related to Islam. While "sharia" in this context is just being used as an euphemism for stubbornness, the remark seems deliberately intended to allude to the wild accusations that he's some kind of Muslim Brotherhood sleeper agent.
