Conservative activist Grover Norquist tells Newsmax that the Obama administration’s decision to delay implementation of the penalty on employers who fail to comply with the requirement to purchase healthcare for their employees amounts to an acknowledgement of failure.

“Ouch. This is not the president’s critics saying his plan sucks,” asserted Norquist, in an exclusive telephone interview from England on Tuesday. “This is the president saying ‘my plan sucks. If you knew what was in it you wouldn’t like it. So I’m going to delay pieces of what’s in it.’”

Earlier, the Obama administration announced a one-year delay in the penalty’s effective date — from January 2014 to January 2015 — for companies with 50 or more workers to provide affordable coverage to their full-time employees or risk a series of escalating tax penalties if just one worker ends up getting government-subsidized insurance.

Obamacare: Massive New Rules Revealed for 2013

Business groups have complained since the law passed that the provision was too complicated.

But Norquist, the Harvard-educated president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), says

it’s obvious that the White House wants to keep the president’s unpopular law from damaging the chances of House and Senate Democrats in the 2014 elections.

“So they keep putting the pain off hoping to get past one more election,” Norquist explained. “If the premise was good they’d be up there bragging ‘this is great. Everybody wants this. It’s going to be good. You should be happy. Everybody’s happy.’”

Norquist’s group has documented some 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses under the Obamacare law, which ATR believes will amount to one of the largest tax increases in American history.

Norquist, who is also a Newsmax contributor, said the rollout of Obamacare has been politicized from the start.

“The whole timing of healthcare implementation was political where the pain was supposed to come after the (presidential) election,” he said.

“Why was the whole thing not structured to take place all at once? Well certain things were done at the beginning and other things were done later — and the pain was done later,” he said.

“What this does is it delays it until after the next election or at least delays it now, and they’ll delay it again for a year.”

Norquist said the Obama administration should have faced the fact that the healthcare law is unworkable.

“If you realized it wasn’t going to work you’d end it,” he said. “So they’ve delayed for a year something they think is a problem.”

Norquist added, “it certainly sounds as if it’s pulling a brick out of the bottom of what’s supposed to be a house, and seeing the house come down.”

Obamacare: Massive New Rules Revealed for 2013