As a boy growing up in Massachusetts in the 1960s, Grover Norquist claims to have had a political epiphany. He thought Republicans should brand themselves as members of the party that would never raise taxes, much as Coca-Cola had stamped itself in the public mind as a trusted drink. At the time it was not a popular idea. “When I was 12, no one was particularly interested in my thoughts on how to restructure the modern Republican party,” he recalled this week.

They are now. Other than being voted class president at high school and to the board of the National Rifle Association, Mr Norquist has never held elected office. But some four decades later, the idea that germinated when he was a young man has a grip on Republicans in Washington and is at the heart of the country’s political gridlock.

After a 12-member committee of Congress closed without agreement on Monday on how to cut the deficit, reinforcing Washington’s reputation for dysfunctional government, friends and foes rushed to shower praise and blame on Mr Norquist and his lobby group, Americans For Tax Reform, for its demise. “He was the 13th member of the committee,” said Democratic senator John Kerry, blaming his anti-tax crusade for scuttling a deal. By contrast, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the conservative bible, headlined an editorial: “Thank you, Grover Norquist.”