Blogging the Right Thing: The Fairness and Force of the Fair Tax

December 4, 2008 Adam Graham Economy, Huckabee No Comments

Chapter 10 of “Doing the Right Thing” is the Fair Tax Chapter.  Huckabee begins by telling the story of a mechanist who was working an extra shift to put his daughter through Graduate School, but found him shoved into a higher tax bracket, meaning much of what he earned from his extra work just went to cover the taxes.

Huckabee adds the insanity of the system is that if the man quit his job, stayed at home and watched ESPN, his income would be so low, his daughter would be elligible for special grants and loans. Thus, the need for tax reform.

Huckabee answers a longheld question, “How did he come to support a National Retail Sales Tax?” Some have seen it as pure opportunism. While the mechanism changed, in his Huckabee’s prior book, “From Hope to Higher Ground“, Huckabee suggested a flat tax as a preferred mechanism and in the early part of the campaign, saying he concluded it would be a significant improvement. The problem with the Flat Tax according to Huckabee is that “it still represents a tax on work and productivity and therefore discourages the very thing that creates capital.”

Huckabee heard about the Fair Tax from voters and didn’t know what the plan was until someone gave him a copy of the Fair Tax book. He read the book through twice, consulted with his CPA as well other CPA,  and by the end of the campaign, he’d become one of its most enthusiastic supporters.

His argument is pretty standard Fair Tax advocacy, though done in a fairly easy to understand way. Huckabee argues that there are four keys to responsible structure. That the tax is Flat, Fair, Finite, and Family Friendly. Oddly enough, Huckabee argues that the Fair Tax would even benefit same sex couples.

Huckabee credits Fair Tax supporters in part for his strong Iowa Strawpoll finish as they’d shown up at the strawpoll in force, and as Huckabee was one of the biggest advocates of the plan, he was the biggest beneficiary of it.

Huckabee said the Fair Tax was one reason, he was reluctant to end his campaign becuase he knew “the remaining public voice for the Fair Tax would be silenced. I was not merely an advocate for the Fair Tax because of the campaign. I hope to continue to be a cheerleader for an idea I truly believe can and will change America for the better.”

Huckabee, however, realized that as with his campaign, the Fair Tax proposal was being pushed through grassroots efforts. This led to one of the more amazing stories of the campaign. A trucker who supported Huckabee, Randy Bishop informed Huckabee of a large vent in Traverse City, Michigan in January, but Huckabee had to get back to South Carolina, so he sent the Truck Driver to represent him at a Lincoln Dinner and by all accounts he was represented quite well.

Regardless of his own future, Huckabee believes the Fair Tax will eventually be passed if the level of grassroots support for the tax refrom grows to the point that members

Blogging the Right Thing: Let’s Get Vertical

December 4, 2008 Adam Graham Huckabee No Comments

How could an Evangelical Christian Pro-Lifer hope to get elected President?  This question dogs supporters of Mike Huckabee more than anything else.

He explains his view in Chapter 9 of Do the Right Thing, “Let’s Get Vertical.” Huckabee’s argument is that while people who are party activists care about where a candidate’s positions land on a Horizontal (Left-Right) scale, most voters are more concerned about problems being solved and the country or state moving Vertically (up instead of down.)

The theory is perhaps the greatest answer to how a conservative politician or any politician succeeds. People will let a party have its way if the Economy is going well, the budget is being properly managed, education is improving, etc. It’s quite similar to what a newly minted Democratic Governor Howard Dean told Vermont Democrats in the early 1990s.

The one big myth that’s developed is the that of “The Centrist Idealogue.” You know the person who votes for the candidate who seems closest to the center. The model seemed out of touch with reality given wins by people on both extremes of the spectrum. Huckabee’s vertical theory holds more water and explanatory power towards politics than strict ideological view of voting.

Huckabee tells of several everyday people who came up to express support for him, even though they were Democrats or Independents such as a Taxi Driver in Des Moines, a skycap in O’Hare, and the flight attendants on a Los Angeles to Boston flight.

Huckabee does talk about Fred Thompson’s campaign and cites it as an example of a campaign that was focused on being most horizontal of the GOP campaigns. Thompson went after Huckabee as a liberal for receiving the endorsements of “Union of Mechanists and Aerospace Workers”  as well as the “Painters Union” which Thompson used to go after Huckabee as a liberal.

Huckabee wrote, “What Fred failed to grasp (among the many things Fred failed to grasp about running for president) was that the endorsements did not reflect the unions’ total agreement with all my politics or policies. In fact, both unions had to deal with some heartburn about some of the positions I took that stood in direct conflict with their own official union positions. But I was the only GOP candidate who actually went and listened to them and gave them straight answers to their questions.”

Huckabee is clear that vertical politics means that conservative credentials don’t matter but “ideological purity without the capacity to deliver a more effective and efficient way of governing was no longer justifiable.”

He writes of life on the road and flying commerical during most of the ‘07-’08 Presidential Campaign, which while helping him connect with ordinary Americans who were suffering through a “Flinstones” Air Traffic Control system in the midst of a “Jetsons” Aerospace era. The downside for Huckabee is that he had to spend much more time in flight than other candidates who had charters, as direct trips from Little Rock to Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina were simply not available and required multiple connections.

The book also includes a look inside the making of the Huckabee-Chuck Norris ad which also produced a memorable blooper reel: