Go to the “About” page on the Americans for Tax Reform website, and you will find the statement that “the government’s power to control one’s life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized.” Grover Norquist, ATR’s founder, has repeated that sentence countless times in the years since he founded the group in 1986. The main tool that ATR has used to implement its mission statement has been the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a simple three-sentence statement that conservative activists press Republican candidates to sign each election season. By many measures, the pledge has been extremely successful. In the 111th Congress, 34 U.S. senators and 172 U.S. representatives have signed it. So has every Republican presidential candidate who ever made it to the White House since Ronald Reagan. As Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter once said, “It has transformed American politics.”