Image: Wiki

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist spoke to the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference on Friday and, as is his shtick, filled his speech with a few odd metaphors. Norquist is well-known for both creating the anti-tax pledge of the 2010 elections and once saying he wishes for government to be small enough that you could “drown it in the bathtub,” among other things. His latest metaphor whipped out for Pennsylvania conservatives: Republicans who vote to raise taxes are a “rat head in a Coke bottle.”

The idea went something like this: If the GOP is going to dismantle the left and continue to get elected, no Republican can, ever, vote to raise taxes. Not only will a ‘no tax pledge’ help the modern Republican party with its branding, but if you cut taxes, you choke off the left’s money supply and there’s none left for, as he put it, the “trail lawyers, labor bosses,” and “big city political machines.”

Additionally, the “dependency movement,” which includes both those on welfare and “the people who make $90 thousand a year managing the dependency of others, making sure none of them get jobs and become Republicans,” will be in dire straights.

And when the money is cut off by Republican anti-tax zealots, those seated at the left’s “table” will begin eating one another and throwing each other overboard, because, in actuality, they dislike one another.

“We have basically branded the modern Reagan Republican Party,” he said. “They will not raise your taxes. You can go into the voting booth drunk, vote Republican and be pretty sure they’re not going to raise your taxes. It makes it easier to vote for the Republican Party.”

This will make the Republican Party more like beverage company Coca Cola, he said.

“[Coca Cola] put a lot of effort into quality control and branding, so you go into the store pick up a Coke, put it in the basket, go home. You don’t have to look at it, read the ingredients, ask your friends what’s inside. You know what’s inside. You take it home. But if you get home and you’re two-thirds the way into the Coke bottle and you look inside and there’s a rat head in your Coke bottle… you begin to wonder if you’re going to buy Coke in the future. And you go on TV, you show them the rat head and Coke has a big problem,” he said. “Republican officials who vote for tax increases are rat heads in a Coke bottle.”

Oddly, Coke may not have been the best example of no-brainer ingredients. Earlier this month, both Coke and Pepsi actually changed their ingredients to avoid a cancer warning on the labels, due to a California ballot initiative aimed at limiting people’s exposure to toxic chemicals.

Similarly, as Think Progress has noted, Ronald Reagan raised taxes during his eight years in the 80s. Therefore, the primary example of what’s so good about the Republican Party—Reagan—is a rat head.