Frank Gaffney - Dispute With Grover Norquist

Dispute With Grover Norquist

In February 2003, Gaffney and David Horowitz criticized Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist and prominent Republican strategist, for alleged ties to Abdurahman Alamoudi, Khaled Saffuri, and Sami al-Arian, all of whom had attempted to influence the Bush Administration.

Gaffney said a press release by the American Muslim Council credited Ali Tulbah, a Bush-White House aide, for getting them access to the administration. Norquist banned Gaffney from the weekly "Wednesday Meeting" of the Leave Us Alone Coalition that Norquist hosted. Norquist later wrote an open letter, implying that Gaffney's account amounted to "racial prejudice, religious bigotry ethnic hatred." In 2011, Gaffney accused Norquist of "helping the Muslim Brotherhood spread its influence" in the U.S. government. David Keene, President of the American Conservative Union, later commented on the Gaffney-Norquist dispute, saying, "I, for one, don't see it. If you read the transcript, you can see if Frank was right or wrong, but there was nothing racist or bigoted about it."

In a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove dismissed Gaffney's assertions regarding Bush, stating "there's no there there." In an article appearing in the January 2007 edition of Vanity Fair about neoconservatives who pushed for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Gaffney said of Bush, "He doesn't in fact seem to be a man of principle who's steadfastly pursuing what he thinks is the right course. He talks about it, but the policy doesn't track with the rhetoric, and that's what creates the incoherence that causes us problems around the world and at home."