tenebaum vs. deMint in the so. carolina election

Right Now, A Tax on Consultants Must Sound Pretty Good to Inez
From John Fund’s WSJ Political Diary:

The campaign gurus for Inez Tenenbaum, South Carolina’s Democratic contender for the Senate, must be wondering where they’ve gone wrong. For weeks now they’ve been whacking GOP competitor Jim DeMint over the head for proposing a consumption tax that would allegedly represent a 23% tax bite on the food, drugs and rent paid by poor people and middle-class families. Yet Rep. DeMint continues to lead Ms. Tenenbaum in the polls. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her advisers that Mr. DeMint is only too happy to go 10 rounds over taxes.

Mainstream Democrats shy away from the subject, in part because they know their own higher-tax philosophy is at odds with the vast majority of voters. But Ms. Tenenbaum and Co. thought they could score a few points against Mr. DeMint over a proposal to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. Her critique, of course, overlooks the offsetting elimination of the taxes that are already implicitly priced into the cost of goods and services.

Worse, voters have been given an excuse to learn something about Mr. DeMint, namely that he has defined his House career as a big-thinking tax pioneer. Ms. Tenenbaum’s attack has only guaranteed attention for his argument about the urgency of cutting the overall tax burden, simplifying the code, increasing the percentage of taxes actually collected and making the system more equitable.

The South Carolina media has dutifully followed Ms. Tenenbaum’s lead and turned taxes into a big talking point. Voters have learned, for instance, that Mr. DeMint recently authored a bill (and collected more than 100 co-sponsors) to set up an independent commission to look into overhauling the tax code. Besides a consumption tax, he’s spoken favorably of the flat-tax option as well. How could giving this topic airtime fail to help a Republican?

Now that’s she’s raised the subject, her own tax past has returned to haunt Ms. Tenenbaum too. She’s the one who now must defend past support for a boost in the state sales tax, plus explain why she doesn’t have a tax reform plan of her own. At least for now, tax policy is getting a whole new high profile in the South Carolina race, perhaps to the Tenenbaum campaign’s chagrin.

— Kim Strassel
Posted by Andrew Roth, reposted here at toothdigger's comeback by me...emphasis by me...