Some Straight Talk On The Huck

Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls in Iowa has certainly gotten the attention of the traditional media, and the Romney camp is clearly managing expectations in order to blunt the effect of a potential Huckabee victory:

"It would be nice if Romney won," said Doug Gross, an attorney overseeing Romney's Iowa campaign. "If he finishes in the top two, he's fine."

Now that Huckabee has launched himself to the top of the heap (and if he follows through, it would be kind of an indictment of the notion that money rules in politics), it's time to take a substantive look at his record and his proposals. I'm dubious that the media will actually do this. For example, perhaps the most prominent soundbite to come out of the YouTube debate was his statement that "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office" when asked about his support for the death penalty. This was actually a massive cop-out.

...what reporters didn't note is that Huckabee was dodging a direct question on the very area -- the intersection of religion and policy -- on which he is building his campaign. The man whose ads call him a "Christian Leader" and who says his faith "defines me" wouldn't answer a pretty simple question on how his faith affects his opinion on a policy issue.

But the press stood up an applauded. So witty! So clever! Ah, that Mike Huckabee, what a lovable guy!

In fact, it's this tendency to focus on Huckabee's personality instead of his policy that is masking one of the most insane ideas to appear in this cycle - his "fair tax" proposal.

"Abolishing the IRS", of course, is the purported effect of enacting the "FairTax" proposal Huckabee supports. This would replace the income tax with a national sales tax. But you would still need a bureaucracy to enforce the sales tax! Business owners aren't going to be willing to hand over 30% of the cost of goods sold [the tax rate you would need to have a revenue neutral sales tax] just because they're a bunch of really swell people. In addition, a sales tax of that magnitude is terrible economics. The FairTax idea is beyond silly, and in the unlikely event that Huckabee is the GOP nominee, right-of-center economists will be committing professional malpractice if they don't rise up en masse to debunk this malarky. Bruce Bartlett provides a good template: "In short, the FairTax is too good to be true, and voters should not take seriously any candidate who supports it."

Huckabee takes a complex problem (the byzantine tax code) and applies a simple solution that would actually be unbelievably regressive and essentially shovel more money to the rich and powerful, as well as open up a huge expansion of the black market trafficking in untaxed goods. There's no justification for it, which is why it has been roundly denounced any time a politician, like Steve Forbes, brings it up. Because Huckabee is an amiable politician with some rhetorical gifts, he's getting away with a batshit crazy idea as his main campaign plank.