THE SALVATION OF 2008

Earlier this week, the Drudge Report ran two stories on its home page, each with a picture that coincidentally were placed one on top of the other.  The pictures were these:

Our president meets with the world's greatest living hero of peace and liberty from Communist oppression, while Russia's meets with the greatest terrorist thug on the planet.

Somehow, for reasons it would take a deep plunge into dark psychological depths to figure out, Ahmadinutjob's friend is far more popular among his countrymen than the friend of the Dalai Lama is among his.

The latest Reuters/Zogby poll (10/17) has Bush's job approval rating at 24%.  This, when we are winning in Iraq, the Dow is up 16% in the last 12 months, unemployment and inflation are low, and we haven't been hit by a single terrorist attack in over six years (since 9/11).

For all of that, the poll says that 66% of Americans think the "country is on the wrong track."  Obviously, though, they don't place all the blame on Bush, but on Congress as well.  Bush's approval rating is over twice that of Congress – meaning the Democrats who run the place now – which is 11%.

Americans are by and large in a sour mood.  The only hope for Republicans in 2008, it seems, is that voters will be more soured on Democrats than Republicans for House and Senate seats, and be more turned off by Hillary than whomever the GOP offers up.

It's a slender reed of hope on which to bet the future of America.  For if the Dems sweep the White House and Congress, every Republican Bush-hater will soon long for the yesterday of GW.  A Socialist-Fascist America run by a criminal political mafia and enforced by hundreds of hyper-liberal judges.

Yet fear of this, fear of Hillary – FOH – will not be sufficient to prevent this.  What the voters have to be offered is something so exciting, so electrifying, so positive yet well-grounded, well-thought-out and researched so it is actually achievable, that it sweeps away the sourness.

This is what happened in 1994.  The electorate was in this same crummy mood, and the GOP came up with the Contract With America.  The CWA was an exciting positive vision that was real and achievable.  Voters responded by ending the Democrat Party's monopoly control of 64 years (with two irrelevant interruptions) over the House.

What Republicans need is the CWA's equivalent for 2008.  There is such a thing, and what's more, a growing number of key Republican Party leaders are beginning to embrace it.

The Salvation of 2008 for the Republican Party is The Fair Tax.

Other wimpy proposals like eliminating Corporate Income Taxes are a total dud with most voters.  What do they care?  The Fair Tax not only eliminates all personal and corporate taxes, it eliminates the IRS as a Federal Agency.

No tax preparation, no keeping every receipt and having to justify who you had lunch with as a deduction, no April 15 – it's just another day.

This grabs all those who go through such tortures of the filing damned – but hordes of voters pay little or no federal income taxes at all.  Except those who are then nabbed by Monster of AMT, the Alternate Minimum Tax, devised just to snare "millionaires" and now rapes the wallets of millions of middle class folk.  The Fair Tax eliminates the AMT.  Oh, and the hated Death Tax as well.

That still leaves a gigantic swath of the electorate that has two things in common:  they vote Democrat more than Republican, and they see a hole blown out of their paycheck every week by FICA payroll taxes.  The Fair Tax eliminates all payroll taxes.

No withholding, no FICA, no paycheck deducts of any kind.  Joe or Suzie Sixpack get every dime of what they earned every week, every paycheck.

That's real vision, real change that can generate real voter excitement.

The Dems will demagogue it of course, starting with the boogey-man of the Fair Tax's 30% national retail sales tax.

Yet independent economists make a good case that the elimination of tax compliance and asset misallocation as business expenses will allow businesses to reduce their prices almost equivalent to the cost increase of the sales tax.  It's pretty much of a wash, price-wise to the consumer.

On the other hand, the almost unimaginable (to us now) explosion of entrepreneurial activity, of investment, of wealth creation, job creation, and business opportunity unleashed by the elimination of the IRS, personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, death taxes, the alternate minimum tax, and payroll taxes will result in an enormously wealthier America, in enormously wealthier Americans across the economic board.

If Republicans can give the voters this vision, that they are the voters ticket to affluence, that the Democrats are the Party of Big Taxes, Big Government, and Big Brother while the Republicans are the Party of Freedom, Opportunity, and Prosperity, 2008 will be their year just as was 1994.

Here's the difference between us and the Dems, they could say to blue-collar Democrat voters:  the Democrat Party wants you to stay poor so you'll keep voting Democrat – the Republican Party wants you to prosper so then you'll keep voting Republican.

Will the GOP do it?  Of the eight remaining presidential candidates ( with Brownback gone), five support the Fair Tax – Huckabee, Hunter, Paul, Tancredo, and McCain.  Only McCain is top-tier, while Romney and Thompson are uncommitted and Giuliani says no. 

Once Romney sees the Fair Tax's growing popularity, he'll sail with the wind.  Same with Thompson.  Someone needs to pound some Fair Tax sense into Rudy's stubborn Italian skull.

It will come down, as politics most often does, to the money.  The GOP desperately needs something to electrify donors as much as voters.  Right now as you are reading this, GOP party leaders are explaining to major donors how much their businesses will flourish with the Fair Tax, and how much their donations will enable that flourishing to become real.

Once the GOP donors begin demanding Republican candidates as a whole, from President to Senate to House, embrace the vision of the Fair Tax, then things start to get interesting.

Once again, like so very much else in To The Point, you heard about the Salvation of 2008 first here, folks.