Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), is pushing back against charges that he and his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” were dealt a significant blow Tuesday when 34 Republican Senator voted to proceed on an amendment drafted by ATR nemesis Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.).

Coburn’s porposal would eliminate about $6 billion worth of ethanol tax subsidies, raising about $2.5 billion in revenue for the remainder of the year that would be put towards deficit reduction. Tuesday’s vote was a not on passage, but was simply a cloture vote to end debate and advance the amendment. It came well short of the 60 votes needed, falling 40 to 59 as most Democrats opposed the measure to protest the procedural methods Coburn used to force the vote.

Some viewed the vote as a rebuke to Norquist, who vocally denounced Coburn’s amendment as a tax increase and therefor as a violation of the ATR Pledge. Norquist did, however, give the go-ahead for members to vote for the amendment so long as they agreed to support another amendment offered by Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) that would offset the higher ethanol taxes by eliminating the inheritance tax, and would take Coburn’s amendment one step further by ending the federal ethanol mandate.

In an interview with National Review Online, Norquist accuses Coburn of deliberately attempting to deceive his colleagues into supporting a tax increase in order to undermine the GOP position on taxes and lay the groundwork for massive tax hikes in the future. “He’s trying to screw the rest of the Republican Party because he is so mad at the world,” Norquist said of Coburn. “He didn’t want to get rid of ethanol tax credit without raises taxes. The important thing in his life was raising taxes.”

Norquist points out that Tuesday’s vote played right into the Democrats’ hands by allowing them to cast Republicans as amenable to tax increases. Indeed, a number of Democrats put out statements to this effect following the vote. “A realistic conversation about deficit reduction must include both cuts and revenues, and Senator Coburn’s amendment to eliminate $6 billion in tax earmarks for ethanol is an important part of this discussion,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), ranking member on the House Budget Committee. “His willingness to cut special interest tax breaks for the purpose of deficit reduction is encouraging.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) jumped at the opportunity to exploit this apparent rift on the right. “The mass Republican vote to end ethanol subsidies was a watershed moment that means tax expenditures are fair game in the now ongoing deficit reduction talks,” he said on a press call with reporters. “The dam is officially broken, the knee-jerk right-wing opposition to get rid of any subsidies is subsiding.”

And Democrats in Massachusetts wasted no time attacking Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.) — up for reelection in 2012 — for “breaking promises” by violating the ATR Pledge, in which lawmakers promise to oppose all tax hikes, as well as “any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”

Norquist said Republicans like Brown should realize that Coburn was throwing them under the bus by forcing a vote on this amendment. “As soon as they voted, he turned around and called them sluts,” Norquist said. “Guys like that didn’t get second dates in high school.”

For his part, Coburn took a not-so-subtle swipe at Norquist following the vote. “Taxpayers should be encouraged that Republican senators overwhelmingly rejected the ludicrous argument that eliminating tax earmarks is a tax increase,” he said in a statement. And other Republicans senators seemed to concur. “Cutting out special subsidies hardly is the same thing as raising taxes,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), who heads GOP campaign operations. Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) added: “Grover Norquist can say what he wants, but I would disagree with him on this.”

“I voted for lower food prices and less federal debt. I’d do that again if I could,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) when asked about his vote on Wednesday. “The tax code’s full of examples of unwarranted tax breaks. Yesterday’s a good example of one.”

Norquist says Coburn deliberately misled his colleagues and other conservatives groups, many of which did not realize that Coburn’s amendment fails to eliminate the federal ethanol mandate, which requires that the United States consume 36 billion gallons of “renewable fuels” per year by 2022 — nearly half of which will consist of ethanol. He described Coburn’s stance on ethanol as “phony balony.”

The group’s founder, Pat Toomey, is now a senator from Pennsylvania and is backing Coburn.

“Grover’s accomplished something significant in his whole pledge.The priority that it’s been given has been a useful tool in uniting Republicans. But I don’t know if there’s any Republican more committed to low taxes and pro-growth policies than I’ve been, and I just see this as a very badly thought-out policy,” Toomey told reporters Tuesday. “We have a tax code that’s littered with all kinds of credits that amount to, in many cases, a disguise for more government spending.”

the ickiest tax credit around …

caused nothing by distortions in markets make it more expensive … just as much ethanol … deliberately did not fix the ethanol problem … vote against DeMint … he is trying to build the bridge … pure tax increase vote … Republicans voted for tax increase … for ethanol … tax credit match it with reduction in the tax rate … DeMint … clean let’s kill the ethanol mandate bill and abolish death tax bill and have vote paired with Coburn … didn’t want it leadership to agree force immediately …

vote abolish mandate and tax cut larger than Coburns tax increase ../Met with leadership and staffers… screwing your boss and here’s how we’re fixing it… All pretenses is dropped, drive to get republicans tricked into voting for a tax increase… Lies already hurt other republicans because he lied and voted…Proceeded to go to the votes violate the pledge…Nobody followed coburn over the cliff…