FairTax efforts popular in GOP

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After Rep. Steve King endorsed a national retail sales tax to replace the federal income tax during his first run for Congress, his own campaign coordinator told him his candidacy was finished.

Three elections later, the Iowa Republican still stands in the vanguard of the FairTax, a tax revolution that has taken hold of the 2008 Republican presidential debate and turned from outcast to kingmaker, including aiding presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee's surprise second-place showing in this month's influential Iowa Republican presidential straw poll.

Of the major candidates on the Republican side six, including all-but-announced candidate Fred Thompson, have said they are either active supporters or would at least be willing to sign a FairTax bill if it reached their desks as president. It has popped up in the debates, and in the run-up to the Iowa straw poll it was almost impossible to attend a campaign rally, meet-and-greet or town hall and not find someone wearing a FairTax T-shirt or baseball cap.

"It's almost as popular as being opposed to amnesty," Mr. King said, comparing the tax issue to the immigration issue that has also swept Iowa this year, forcing the Republican presidential candidates to heel to activists' desire for border security.

The FairTax is the survivor from what could be called the great tax-reform debates of Republicans' time in control of Congress, having eclipsed its main rival, the flat income tax, over the past few years.

Supporters say they could abolish the income tax, the Internal Revenue Service and the April 15 paperwork headaches and replace it with a 23 percent tax on all retail sales. There are no exemptions, but the government would pay a monthly rebate to every taxpayer to make up for what is spent on essentials such as food and clothing.

But don't expect to hear a lot of push in Washington for it — supporters have taken a decidedly outside-the-Beltway approach to stirring up support, using activists in places like Iowa and early-primary states such as Florida to try to win attention in the presidential contests.

"We got there by deciding there were a few places in the country that candidates had to talk face to face with people," said Ken Hoagland, the spokesman for Americans for Fair Taxation, the nonprofit group pushing the FairTax. "We knew that people love the FairTax, and we would have very little success lobbying in Washington, so we took our message to people in the primary states and asked them to take the message to the candidates."

That's exactly how they won converts such as Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who signed on in March and has become one of its most ardent supporters.

"I kept hearing about it in Iowa, and people asked me if I supported it. I then got ['The FairTax Book'], read it twice, then met with some of the people behind it to ask questions as to how it worked," he said. "The more I learned, the more devoted I became."