(1) “Huckabee Building Support in New Hampshire” by Soren Dayton in The Daly Acts
Wed Mar 14 2007 11:04 AM

“Though he is mentioned derisively as a “second-tier” presidential candidate, former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee is quietly making gains in New Hampshire, the earliest primary state.

Debra Vanderbeek signed on last week to run Huckabee’s New Hampshire operations. Venderbeek served as chief of staff for former Rep. Jeb Bradley and is an experienced Republican political hand.

“I was surprised to see Deb go with Huckabee,” one Republican state legislator told The Daily Acts. “That fact alone is enough to get me to take a second look at him. I respect Deb’s judgment.”

http://www.thedailyacts.com/stories.php?story_id=59&comment_added=true

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(2) “VIVA HUCKABEE!” by Noah Scheiber in The Plank
08.11.07

“Whatever the case, it’s hard to overstate the significance of Huckabee’s performance here. Combined, Huckabee and Brownback–the field’s two leading social conservatives–outpolled Mitt Romney today 33 to 31.5. If, as the results suggest, Huckabee emerges as the lone standard bearer for this group, he’ll probably end up with a block of support to rival Romney’s. (Most “Brownbackers” I spoke to would feel extremely comfortable throwing their support behind the Arkansan.) But, of course, just combining Brownback’s and Huckabee’s numbers actually way understates Huckabee’s potential ceiling. For one thing, he’s come this far running on fumes. It will be interesting to see what he can do with the fundraising boost he’ll enjoy after today. On top of that, there seem to be a lot of social conservatives currently supporting Romney because he’s running as the most conservative of the top-tier candidates. Now that Huckabee has demonstrated his viability, it’s not hard to imagine him peeling off a decent number of Romney’s conservative backers.”

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the_plank?pid=134096

This may well be a resurgence of the Reagan-democrats of a couple of decades ago. It’s going to be VERY interesting to watch.

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(3) “Democrats Beware: An Economic Populist Is Rising In the GOP’s Presidential” by David Sirota in SirotaBLOG 8/14/07

“Huckabee has an extraordinarily different message than any of the other Republican presidential contenders – a populist economic message that may be shunned by conservative operatives and K Street lobbyists in the GOP-dominated Money Party in Washington, but likely has an appeal among rank-and-file working-class Republican voters.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/dems-beware-an-economic-_b_60370.html#postComment

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(4) Jokisch & Kotlikoff on The Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Effects of the FairTax at TaxProf Blog 8/16/2007

“America’s aging coupled with high and growing old–age health and pension benefits augers for much higher payroll taxes, with damaging effects on the U.S. economy. This prognosis is supported by our analysis of a detailed dynamic life–cycle general equilibrium model. The FairTax, which proposes to replace the federal payroll, personal income, corporate income, and estate tax with a progressive consumption tax, offers a potential alternative to this dismal economic future. According to our simulation model, these policy changes would lead to major improvements in the U.S. capital stock, long–run real wages and the well–being of the majority of Americans.”

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2007/08/jokisch-kotliko.html#comments