Fox News Sunday and This Week both took a long look at second tier Republican candidates claiming to be the only choice for real conservatives this primary season. Mike Huckabee, taking a break from celebrating his wedding anniversary, talked to Chris Wallace about his plan to eliminate the IRS, a tactic sure to endear him to conservatives from coast to coast:
Here’s how the fair tax works: You get rid of income tax, you get rid of all of withholding, you get rid of corporate taxes completely, totally, because those taxes are not really paid by the corporations, they’re passed onto the customer. With a 22 percent embedded tax in the system, you eliminate that, which means that the prices of what you purchase will go down. You replace it with a 23 percent consumption tax. Now, that sounds expensive, but here’s what happens. You only pay when you purchase something new. Whether it’s a product or it’s a service. The point is it’s a completely transparent tax system, it doesn’t increase taxes, it’s revenue neutral, but here’s what it will do: it will bring business back to the United States that’s leaving our shores because our tax laws make it impossible for an American based business to compete.
Former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, meanwhile, tried to cement his status as a Washington outsider in this exchange with George Stephanopoulos about the immigration compromise.
Let me tell you what conservatives are concerned about: conservatives are concerned that all the discussion, including on this show, was more of a technical, insider type of fix of the situation and not a real discussion of principle. And the real principle here is that we can’t have a sovereign state that doesn’t control its own borders. We simply have to put that first and make sure that we control our borders so that we can control the situation. Otherwise you’re going to do some kind of compromise or insider sort of deal, here in Washington, D.C.
On the Democratic side of the ledger, Bill Richardson staked out a position to the left of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with regard to Iraq during his appearance on Meet the Press.
Tim, I know this region well. I was U.N. ambassador. Eighty percent of my time was spent on the Iraq issue. I faced down Saddam Hussein, brought back two American hostages. I know the region well. I know the leaders there. I regret not having pushed more diplomatically early on with President Bush. I do regret that. But look where we are now. There’s a civil war, there’s sectarian conflict. Right now I believe we must withdraw all our troops by the end of this calendar year with no residual forces because our troops today are a target.
