Huckabee Woos Voters With 23% Sales Tax  

WASHINGTON -- Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax.

The idea -- dubbed the "fair tax" by proponents -- has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier.

Sales tax proponents have tapped into seething voter hostility toward the Internal Revenue Service to become a below-the-radar political force, popping up at campaign events and candidate forums in Iowa and elsewhere.

The efforts on Huckabee's behalf by sales tax advocates helped spur his surprise second-place showing in an August Iowa straw poll -- the breakthrough that marked the beginning of his rise in the state and nationwide.

He is the only major presidential candidate to make the idea central to his campaign. "The first thing I'd love to do as president: Put a 'going out of business' sign on the Internal Revenue Service," he said at one debate.

Some wonder, however, whether his embrace of the plan eventually could turn into a liability.

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