Dick Morris was Mike Huckabee's political advisor in the early nineties so he knows him pretty well. He argues that, contrary to a lot of the sniping at Huckabee for being a tax and spend populist, he really is a fiscal conservative:
A recent column by Bob Novak excoriated Huckabee for a "47 percent increase in state tax burden." But during Huckabee's years in office, total state tax burden - all 50 states combined - rose by twice as much: 98 percent, increasing from $743 billion in 1993 to $1.47 trillion in 2005.
In Arkansas, the income tax when he took office was 1 percent for the poorest taxpayers and 7 percent for the richest, exactly where it stood when he left the statehouse 11 years later. But, in the interim, he doubled the standard deduction and the child care credit, repealed capital gains taxes for home sales, lowered the capital gains rate, expanded the homestead exemption, and set up tax-free savings accounts for medical care and college tuition.
Most impressively, when he had to pass an income tax surcharge amid the drop in revenues after Sept. 11, 2001, he repealed it three years later when he didn't need it any longer.
He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so. (He also got voter approval for a one-eighth cent hike for parks and recreation.)
He wants to repeal the income tax, abolish the IRS, and institute a "fair tax" based on consumption, and he opposes any tax increase for Social Security.
Huckabee is gaining momentum because he appears to be one of the few genuine social conservatives in the race. If he turns out also to be a fiscal conservative he will be a force to be reckoned with in the Republican primaries. It remains to be seen, though, what his detailed position on illegal immigration is. On that issue very few candidates find themselves in harmony with the electorate and it could prove to be the undoing of more than one of them.
The rest of Morris' column can be read here.
RLC
