From one perspective, you have to wish Huckabee, and the other FairTax backers in the Republican field, well. All of the GOP’s second-tier candidates — Alan Keyes, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul — are FairTax proponents, as was the recently departed Tom Tancredo. The other major Republican candidates, including John McCain and Mitt Romney, are all singing the same old song. They are promising a) income tax cuts and b) expanded government services because c) they are willing to claim that cutting income tax rates will trigger so much extra economic growth that revenues will not suffer but will instead expand. One way or another, all the GOP front-runners except Huckabee are lying. They are either a) lying to their supporters who want tax cuts or b) lying to their supporters who want expanded government or c) lying to everybody, perhaps themselves included.

Huckabee, to his credit, doesn’t think this is a good game to play.

This view, however, leaves Huckabee and company at a disadvantage. They need to distinguish themselves somehow from the establishment candidates with better organizations and more media visibility. But they don’t want to find themselves in the future in the place where George H.W. Bush found himself in 1990. Two years after running for president on a promise that he would block any tax increase by telling congressional Democrats, “Read my lips, no new taxes,” he was forced to raised taxes. Huckabee et al. need a new game to play.

Enter the FairTax. It promises to be a game changer. It would abolish the IRS and all current federal taxes, including Medicare, Social Security, and personal and corporate income taxes, and replace them with a national, across-the-board, 23 percent point-of-purchase retail sales tax. It would also give each household a multi-thousand-dollar “prebate” every year on their expected annual taxes and exempt people living below the poverty line from taxes altogether.

The FairTax asks: Don’t we all hate the IRS? Don’t we wish it would just die? And once Huckabee has made the don’t-we-all-hate-the-IRS move, his establishment competitors are suddenly thrown on the defensive. They are the defenders of the hated IRS. They are the people who applaud when the IRS audits you. Cynical on the part of Huckabee? Surely. Dishonest? Somewhat. But remember that this move of Huckabee’s is less cynical and dishonest than the standard Republican line on how tax cuts raise revenue, which the other front-running GOP candidates are still mouthing.

From another perspective, however, you have to scorn Huckabee. He is adding yet more layers of confusion to America’s conversation about taxes. Huckabee says that the FairTax would mean a 23 percent sales tax rate on all items. First of all, the real tax rate proposed is 30 percent. The FairTax would add 30 cents to every dollar spent, but since 30 cents is 23 percent of $1.30, the FairTaxers call the rate 23 percent.

Second, and more important, both conservative and liberal economists believe the real rate would end up even higher. Estimates of the actual rate of taxation required for the FairTax to be “revenue neutral” (meaning for it to bring in exactly the same amount of revenue that the federal government collects under the current system) start at 30 percent and keep climbing. William Gale of the liberal Brookings Institution think tank says it’s a de facto 44 percent sales tax. Calculations go still higher once you add in all the necessary and politically inevitable exemptions on big-ticket items — like a new home or hospital care. Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, which draws members from both parties and both houses, says the real rate would be 57 percent. (And this leaves aside the enormous federal outlay required by the “prebates,” which even FairTax advocates say would cost the government $485 billion per year.)

Also, Huckabee calls his proposal a “fair” tax. But it’s a mammoth tax cut for the crowd making more than $200,000 a year and a substantial tax increase for those making between $30,000 and $200,000 a year. Does this make economic sense? It is hard to see how: What makes the $200,000-plus crowd especially deserving of a tax cut? This is part of a pattern with Huckabee. Anxious to distinguish himself on policies from his competitors but without the staff and the network to perform due diligence on policy proposals, he ends up with ideas that aren’t fully worked out and don’t make much substantive policy sense.

Does the FairTax make political sense? It is hard to see how — at least not if people know what he is really proposing. After all, a lot more people make between $30,000 and $200,000 a year than make more than $200,000. Politicians prefer, other things being equal, to take positions that are advantageous to more people rather than those that are advantageous to fewer.

So why is Huckabee doing this?

I believe the reason is that he is counting on people not knowing what he is really promising. I believe he is counting on the nigh total fecklessness of America’s press corps — a fecklessness that I at least now see as deployed with a sharp partisan edge. As economist John Irons laments on his blog, ArgMax.com: “I’m not sure how he is getting away with adopting the FairTax as part of his platform. Wouldn’t Democrats be skewered in the media if they proposed a tax increase on people making between $30,000 and $200,000?” Yes.

But Huckabee is a Republican. And it is different if you are a Republican. The New York Times in its big Huckabee profile by Zev Chafets said:

Huckabee’s answer to his opponents on the fiscal right has been his Fair Tax proposal … Governor Huckabee promises that this plan would be “like waving a magic wand, releasing us from pain and unfairness.” Some reputable economists think the scheme is practicable. Many others regard it as fanciful … In any case, the Fair Tax proposal is based on extremely complex projections.

And that’s all the crack journalism of the New York Times has to say. If you are seeking information in a daily newspaper, look elsewhere — I recommend the Financial Times.

Since America’s mainstream press believes that it cannot talk about the substance of policy, about who actually would gain and who would lose from a shift to a national sales tax — that, you see, depends on “extremely complex projections” — the only point to grab onto when talking about the national sales tax is that it eliminates the IRS. And that sounds very good. And sounding very good is what Huckabee is counting on.

But what replaces the IRS? What agency administers a national sales tax. Conservative economist and former George H.W. Bush administration official Bruce Bartlett fears the:

incredible complexity and intrusiveness of tracking every American’s monthly income [for the rebate program] … massive technical and administrative problems with collecting all federal taxes at the checkout counter and relying entirely on state governments to collect the federal government’s revenue … What is to stop [states] from slacking off [sales tax enforcement] and giving their citizens a tax cut at federal expense?

Thus this FairTax selling point is bogus too. The FairTax doesn’t eliminate the IRS. It replaces the IRS with another agency — the United States Fair Tax Federal Revenue Administration and State Tax Authority Reconciliation Service, or the USFTFRASTARS. It is true that the USFTFRASTARS doesn’t audit individuals — it audits businesses and state governments instead. This is a good thing for the $200,000-plus crowd: They are the ones who get audited, and so they get both a big tax cut and greatly increased peace of mind. But this is not a good thing for everybody else. The administrative and enforcement burden does not go away but, rather, becomes even more complicated.

Is Huckabee’s FairTax smoke and mirrors? Yes. Is it voodoo economics? Yes. But remember one more thing: It is more reality based than the proposals of the establishment Republican candidates.

Is the campaign denying that it’s trying to keep the Times from publishing? Denying that the Times is working on a story? Or denying the underlying allegations that such a story might or might not make?

We’re not sure that we know. What we do know — because ABC News tells us so — is that the Hillary Clinton campaign, which has been raising questions about Barack Obama having voted “present” occasionally as an Illinois state senator, has registered the domain names of two sites it might use to attack Obama further. There’s nothing on votingpresent.com or votingpresent.org just yet, but ABC says the domains are hosted by the same I.P. address as some official Clinton Web sites and that the campaign intends to use them to paint Obama as “cowardly.” Team Clinton went down that road earlier today, when it had Reps. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Anthony Weiner host a conference call with reporters to accuse Obama of taking the easy way out on tough votes in Illinois.

Meanwhile, John Edwards’ campaign is complaining that it’s at the receiving end of a dirty trick from the Clinton-endorsing American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. A flier from the group uses Edwards’ words to criticize Obama’s healthcare plan, maybe leaving voters with the message that the attack on Obama is coming from Edwards rather than from an organization aligned with Clinton. “Either they are trying to trick people, or they’ve realized that on health care, John Edwards is the candidate who speaks honestly about what it really costs and what will be required to have truly universal coverage,” Edwards’ Iowa state director says in a statement. “It’s fine to have an honest debate about policy, but Iowans deserve better than planted questions and campaign fliers designed to fool them.”

We’re in no position to say what Iowans do or don’t deserve — that’s a job for someone else — but what Mitt Romney apparently deserves is the endorsement of Tom Tancredo. The Colorado representative, who dropped out of the race today, said that staying in might have split the vote among immigration hard-liners and allowed Mike Huckabee or John McCain to secure the Republican presidential nomination. Tancredo may be overstating his stature as a vote-splitting threat: In most national polls, he was drawing all of 1 percent of the vote.

Our only question if Tancredo does exit is this: Which candidate will provide the American people the valuable service of producing scare ads warning of illegal immigrants coming to set off backpack bombs in our shopping malls? In Tancredo’s words, “someone needs to say it.” Mitt Romney, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Update: Fox News says it has “GOP sources close to the campaign” who confirm that Tancredo will be dropping out. Tancredo would not confirm or deny the report.

Were these people for real? Or were they sendups, liberals with webcams acting out their own paranoid parodies of the right-wing fringe?

Honestly, it was sometimes hard to tell.

The candidates? We’re pretty sure they were serious. There was no “morning in America” for this bunch. There was no “pony in there somewhere.” The plain blue rug on which they stood definitely didn’t say “optimistic person comes to work.” Indeed, the word “optimistic” was mentioned about as often as the word “Bush,” which is to say, pretty much never.

At one point, we tried to make a list of all the things the candidates fear:

Illegal aliens. Illegal aliens at Mitt Romney’s house. Having to check whether your painter or roofer has hired illegal aliens. Illegal aliens who want to cut in line. Amnesty for illegal aliens. “Special deals” for illegal aliens. Aliens — legal and illegal both — who make it “difficult for us to assimilate” and “take jobs” from the Americans already here.

The Council on Foreign Relations — hello, Ron Paul! — and the Trilateral Commission and the European Union and a NAFTA highway and international government.

Out-of-control spending. A tax on cigarettes. The costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Department of Education. The IRS. “Most people in this country are more afraid of an audit than they are of a mugging, and there’s a reason why,” Mike Huckabee explained.

Isolationism. Defeatism. Appeasement. Another World War II coming out of Iraq. Hitler! Taxes. Tax increases. Having to make a pledge not to veto tax increases. A world without farm subsidies. Not having a “secure source of food.” Hillary Clinton.

When Anderson Cooper asked Rudy Giuliani why obscure city agencies were forced to pay for his security detail while he visited his mistress in the Hamptons — Cooper left out the mistress part — Giuliani said he needed security as mayor because people were after him. “There were, you know, threats, threats that I don’t generally talk about,” he said. “Some have become public recently; most of them haven’t.”

Oh, yes, there were threats: Hillary Clinton again. China. China selling us poisonous toys. China buying weapons. Immigrants again, only this time maybe they’re from China?

“You should never throw a gun to a person,” Duncan Hunter warned; then he said that the “right to keep and bear arms is an important element of community security, home security, and national security. I think it is a tradition of the American soldier … It is also a large part [of] family tradition.”

Mitt Romney said his son buys guns.

“I own a couple of guns,” Fred Thompson said, “but I’m not going to tell you what they are or where they are.”

Murder, burglary and “one other category of violent crime,” Giuliani said. Abortionists. Thompson said that overturning Roe v. Wade “should be our No. 1 focus right now.”

Hillary Clinton.

Islamic terrorism. Islamic terrorists. The Democrats. Withdrawal. Surrender. Muslims and others who are insufficiently grateful for all the United States has done for them. Romney said he wouldn’t close Guantánamo because he doesn’t want “people that are carrying out attacks on this country to be brought into our jail system and be given legal representation in this country.”

The ACLU. Islamic terrorists again. “They would like nothing better than to kill millions of people as they bring us down,” Thompson explained.

Iran. Expensive oil. “A scenario of defeat.” Another Vietnam. Not another Vietnam. “After we left Vietnam, they didn’t want to follow us home,” John McCain explained. “If you read Zarqawi, if you read bin Laden, if you read Zawahiri, read what they say. They want to follow us home. They want Iraq to be a base for al-Qaida to launch attacks against the United States. Their ultimate destination is not Iraq. Their ultimate destination is New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Phoenix, Arizona.”

“We are living in a world where we are threatened,” Tom Tancredo said. “It is radical Islam.”

Judges who would outlaw religion. Homosexuals who would serve in the military. “We’re in the middle of a war,” Romney explained. Yes, Hunter said, and “most kids who leave that breakfast table and go out and serve in the military and make that corporate decision with their family, most of them are conservatives” with “conservative values … Judeo-Christian values,” and they shouldn’t be forced to serve with homosexuals.

The “entitlement tsunami.” “We also face tough new competition coming from Asia,” Romney said. “We face global jihad, which we just talked about very briefly. We face a whole series of extraordinary problems — overuse of oil, entitlement is out of control.”

Hillary Clinton. John Edwards. Two Americas. Bridges we’re blowing up overseas. Bridges that are falling down at home. Bridges to nowhere.

The Yankees.

Throughout the grueling and ghoulish two hours, Huckabee was the only one who came off as even halfway hopeful. He talked about the importance of education, about not punishing kids for the sins of their parents. And when Joseph from Dallas asked about the Bible, the new man from Hope was sunny enough to pick out the nice parts: “‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ and ‘As much as you’ve done it to the least of these brethren, you’ve done it unto me,’” Huckabee said. “Until we get those simple, real easy things right, I’m not sure we ought to spend a whole lot of time fighting over the other parts that are a little bit complicated. And as the only person here on the stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don’t fully comprehend and understand, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite God, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their God is too small.”

As soon as Huckabee finished speaking, Cooper cued a 30-second video from the Romney campaign: “It’s an election like no other,” it began. “An enemy lurks, waiting to strike. Our Main Street economy is competing with mainland China. Legal versus illegal doesn’t seem to matter. Basic values like marriage are suddenly open to debate. For these challenges, ordinary isn’t good enough.”