Plans to reduce the taxes of wealthy “job creators” remained on the minds of conservatives this last week, with Rick Perry harnessing the reboot of his floundering presidential campaign to a “flat tax” proposal that’s really an alternative maximum tax for people currently in the higher brackets. In an effort to get conservative voters to think about everything and anything other than immigration policy in considering him, Perry nestled his tax plan in a larger package that includes total suspension of federal regulations for a period of time, uninhibited exploitation of fossil fuel resources, and a balanced budget constitutional amendment that includes a permanent limitation on spending as a percentage of GDP (this last item is an item beloved of SC Sen.–and Wingnut Generalissimo–Jim DeMint, whose endorsement Perry would surely love to secure prior to next January’s Palmetto State primary).
Perry’s tax plan and the optional nature of its rates raise a lot of questions, but its shape-shifting features are politically convenient, particularly as compared to Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 proposal, with its unambiguously regressive thrust and its reliance on an unpopular national sales tax. With Newt Gingrich also hawking a flat tax scheme, the conquest of the Republican Party by cranky tax schemers is now very far advanced.
More generally, the GOP presidential contest is revolving around the broadly shared expectation that the campaign of Herman Cain, who now actually leads Mitt Romney in a plurality of national polls, and is attracting three and four times as much support as Rick Perry, will soon collapse. Cain added to that expectation last week with an unforced error of considerable magnitude: a rambling series of remarks in an interview by CNN’s Piers Morgan suggesting the candidate thinks of abortion as a private matter in which government should not interfere. By the time Cain realized his mistake and reiterated his position favoring a ban on all abortions without exception, a lot of damage had been done to his reputation for competence and ideological reliability, particularly among the social issues activists who exert disproportionate power in the Iowa Caucuses. Iowa social conservative kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats summed up the general impression by saying Cain was beginning to sound like the John Kerry of 2004 (not a compliment). It probably wasn’t a coincidence that Cain’s long streak of wowing conservative audiences at joint candidate events came to a decided end in Iowa over the weekend, when he was distinctly underwhelming in a speech to the annual banquet of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.
With Cain’s support levels in Iowa (and other states) already being called into question because of his lack of organization in the state and his low number of visits, it remains to be seen who would benefit from a theoretical Cain collapse. While many observers think the situation in Iowa is ripe for Mitt Romney to swoop in and score a knockout blow over a divided conservative opposition, he’s not exactly showing signs of doing so (he skipped the FFC event, for example, even though he had just made his first brief visit to Iowa since April). Perry is definitely plotting an Iowa comeback, beginning TV ads this week and spending time on such potentially productive activities as a pheasant-hunting jaunt with congressman Steve King, perhaps the only political figure with the power to absolve Perry from his heresies on immigration policy.
You’d think the potential vacuum on the Right would provide an opening for a comeback by Rep. Michele Bachmann, the winner of the August Iowa GOP Straw Poll. But Bachmann’s campaign is visibly struggling, and attracting media attention only for such negative developments as the mass resignation of her NH staff.
Rick Santorum continues to seek to outflank the field on social issues (Cain’s abortion gaffe was a major gift to him), and is totally devoted to an Iowa-centric campaign that will eventually take him to all 99 counties in that state. But the only also-run candidate showing forward momentum in polls in Iowa, or indeed in other early states, is none other than Newt Gingrich, whose strategy of using candidate debates to show off his policy chops and attack the moderators has lifted him ahead of Perry in most surveys. Gingrich and Cain recently accepted a Texas Tea Party invitation to hold a “Lincoln-Douglas”-style one-on-one debate in the Lone Star State next month. Texas is hardly a competitive state so long as Perry is running, and isn’t an early state, either, so this debate decision has reinforced suspicions that both Gingrich and Cain are “business plan candidates” who are in the race to promote their books and television careers rather than to secure the nomination.
But it is clear there will remain for the immediate future strong demand for a “true conservative” candidate who can keep Mitt Romney from running away with the nomination. Just yesterday Romney provoked fresh outrage from conservatives by refusing to take sides in the red-hot Ohio referendum on Gov. John Kasich’s legislation to cripple public-sector unions, SB 5. Romney was almost immediately forced to recant, but that step, of course, simply reinforced his reputation as a flip-flopper.
When you add it all up—Perry’s terrible mispositioning on immigration, Cain’s sloppy campaigning and unnecessary abortion gaffe, and Romney’s incurable tin ear for conservative sensibilities—this is a presidential candidate field with an abundant ability to take a bold step forward onto a garden rake. Like a football game decided by the “turnover margin,” the GOP nomination could ultimately go to the candidate who manages to go for a few crucial weeks at a time without coughing up the ball.
Photo Credit: Mays Business School
