If it means a flat-tax, Huckabee may be right: I'm very dubious there is much progresivity left in the tax code, with it's myriad of rules and tax breaks that require experts to take advantage of.  A plan like Steve Forbes' which sets the first $40K off as tax-free might be fairer than what we have now.  It'd also be a lot easier to catch tax cheats -- if nothing else than redirecting the auditors checking those myriad of rules.  

Huck's problem here isn't that he wants to scrap the income-tax system -- after all, the United States funded its government just fine without a peacetime income tax for most of the history of our republic. Huck's problem is that his proposal actually taxes everything _except_ wealth. He's like the antithesis of the bank robber who answered, when asked why he robbed banks, "Because that's where the money is." Huck's tax plan is the equivalent of someone looking to make a living as a robber but then devoting himself to knocking over soup kitchens.

As to Huck vs. Paul, the difference is that Paul is a libertarian. And while we might all recognize that libertarians are good to have around, and deep down we might even admire them for standing so firmly behind honorable principles, the plain fact is that committed libertarians who like to talk about libertarianism, like Paul, are kind of jerks. If you've ever managed to get a bunch of strangers -- at a bar, say, or a diner after the lunch rush -- to talk about politics on friendly terms, you'll know what I mean. There will always be that one guy who can't take a joke or listen to others, and he's got to have the last word on everything, and he can't believe what idiots you all are and why he even bothers living in this country anymore since nobody really loves freedom or knows what it means to be an American, and eventually he makes everyone just want to shut up and get out of there so they don't have to listen to his angry ranting. That guy is the libertarian. Every time. Mike Huckabee is a perfectly friendly former pastor, and you know that even if he does believe some crazy stuff, he probably isn't going to be a jerk about it and ruin dinner like uncle Joe does every Thanksgiving, and in the plain human terms in which we really judge one another, that makes all the difference.

How can this be? Huckabee's so... so... fresh, so charming, so un-W. And he gives great quote, especially to all those 2nd- and 3rd-tier journos who can only dream of scoring an interview with Obama or HRC or Rudy.

Watch the media turn on this lightweight the way they turned on McCain. Cycle's accelerating-- used to take 5 years for fawning journos to go 180 degrees, not it takes 5 months.

Chait thinks Huck's tax plan is lunacy? That's good enough for me! I'll support it sight unseen if ol' "soak the rich" Jon thinks it's a bad idea.

Barron reminds me that Mike Huckabee's "Phoenix" metaphor isn't his only recent statement