Just about every Republican in Congress has signed Americans for Tax Reform's anti-tax pledge, a promise to oppose tax increases everywhere and always. But South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday that his party had to change, and that dealing with the country's fiscal problems means giving "up some ideological ground."

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, is none too pleased.

"This was a brain fart, not a real idea," he told me in a phone conversation just now. "It doesn’t scare me. I think what he was doing was answering a hypothetical question to show how hypothetically open-minded he was about something."

Norquist said Graham's position that the GOP would need to compromise on income tax deductions makes it sound like he expects Barack Obama to win re-election.

"Who does he think he’s negotiating with? If Romney wins, he’s taken the pledge -- he’s not raising taxes. The [comments] only make sense if he was planning on negotiating with Obama. He needs to have a conversation with the people in South Carolina: ‘You know when I asked for your vote and I promised you I’d reform government and not raise taxes? I was lying. Now would you please re-elect me in 2014?’"