It’s a theme he’s returned to repeatedly over the last few weeks, first in a series of town halls, then in a blog post on the conservative Hawkeye Review. And with Fong competing with a crowded field of candidates that includes a former governor, a former House speaker and a two-time gubernatorial candidate, it is quickly becoming the biggest distinction between Fong and his rivals.

“[My father] said, ‘High taxes are wrong because they inhibit personal freedom.’ Done,” Fong told the Sioux City Journal last month. “For an immigrant from China who’s bottom line is about the American Dream, taxation is really a freedom issue.”

Fong promises to eliminate the income tax and pay for the reduction in revenue with “spending reductions, the closing of special interest tax loopholes and the growth of our economy over time.”

Retired Des Moines Register Editor Richard Doak argued against the “taxes make a recession worse” meme in a Sunday column, saying the arguments made by supply-side economists have fallen flat over the years. Government’s provide a service, and cutting that service to the bone in order to avoid taxes is short sighted.

The conclusion isn’t that tax increases are good. It’s that the economy is too complex to be governed by any single factor. Taxes aren’t the be-all and end-all of the economy. Sometimes tax increases are necessary, and those that are won’t necessarily harm the economy. They didn’t in the past. …

… This isn’t an argument for raising taxes. There might be good reasons for Iowa to avoid raising taxes now, but the supposed ill effects of a tax increase on the economy isn’t one of them.

Fong’s position goes much further than any of his GOP rivals. Bob Vander Plaats simply calls for “simplifying the income tax system” and lowering the tax burden on corporate income. Chris Rants’ focus has so far been on reducing property taxes.

Both men have said previously that they are considering challenging Gov. Chet Culver next year. But in order to do so they would have to give up their current office, and most observers consider them safe bets for re-election if they do stay put.

Northey told the Associated Press’ Mike Glover that he is “leaning toward running for secretary of Agriculture,” but that his final decision would come this summer.

Vaudt said he hasn’t officially made up his mind, but according to Glover, “seemed more focused during the interview on his accomplishments as auditor.”

This comes on the heels of former Gov. Terry Branstad and Vermeer Corp. CEO Mary Andringa telling the Des Moines Register Wednesday that they will not run in 2010. So far, only Sioux City businessman and two-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has officially thrown his hat in the ring.

However, former Republican Party of Iowa Political Director Craig Robinson reports on his blog that state Rep. Christopher Rants of Sioux City is beginning to “lay some ground work for a potential campaign,” visiting Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Council Bluffs in the days since the legislative session ended. Rants said previously that Culver’s handling of the same-sex marriage issue would make him more likely to run for governor in 2010. Despite being ousted as minority leader late last year, Rants took a leading roll in the waning days of the 2009 session, spearheading his party’s efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision and casting one of only three votes against changes to the state’s sex offender laws.

Others who have indicated they are exploring a run include former state Sen. Jeff Lamberti of Ankeny, state Rep. Rob Roberts of Carroll, Ames businessman and GOP financier Bruce Rastetter and U.S. Rep. Steve King of Kiron.

“As I have stated before, I personally believe that marriage is between a man and a woman,” Culver said in the statement. “This is a tenet of my personal faith. The Iowa Supreme Court’s decision has, in fact, reaffirmed that churches across Iowa will continue to have the right to recognize the sanctity of religious marriage in accordance with their own tranditions and church doctrines.”

Adding that the decision does not require churches recognize or officiate over same-sex marriages, Culver said that he, as governor, must respect the authority of the Iowa Supreme Court and uphold the Iowa Constitution.

“After careful consideration and a thorough reading of the court’s decision, I am reluctant to support amending the Iowa Constitution to add a provision that our Supreme Court has said is unlawful and discriminatory,” he said.

In closing, Culver pointed to the current economic recession, lack of jobs and disaster recovery.

“That is where, I believe, my focus and energies should lie,” he said.

Now that Culver has announced his intentions in the wake of the court’s decision, it’s quite likely that several Republicans will keep tentative promises to mount their own gubernatorial election campaigns for 2010.

SAC CITY — Marjie Sands listened intently to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton portray her health-care plan as more inclusive than the New York senator’s opponents this weekend in a campaign stop at the Sac City fire station in northwest Iowa.

For Sands, a nurse at Loring Hospital in Sac City, health care is a defining issue, the one on which she is going to make the final call between Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama on caucus night.

“I need to hear a very great health-care plan, not universal but something where we can help the people who can’t afford it — and make it so that everybody has health insurance,” Sands said. “But the people who are working hard can’t afford it right now and so I’m seeing the results of that in the hospital.”

If she had to caucus today Sands said she would lean toward Obama but is keeping the door open for Clinton.

“I was a Bill Clinton fan,” Sands said.

Living in heavily Republican territory, Sands joked that she doesn’t visit often about politics with her friends and colleagues. That said, when the matter does arise, she hears more negative comments from Republicans about Clinton than Obama.

“My husband’s a very staunch Republican,” Sands said.

And who does he dislike more?

“I think Clinton,” she said.

For her part, Clinton drew a crowd of several hundred people in the fire hall in this county seat town of 2,200, about 30 miles northwest of Carroll. Clinton started her speech by recognizing the sacrifice of Sgt. Adrian Hike, a Carroll native who was killed earlier this month in combat in Afghanistan. Hike’s funeral was just hours before the Clinton appearance.

“It’s another reminder of the sacrifice our men and women in uniform make,” Clinton said.

Clinton staffers said she had no contact with the family and based the remarks on reading local news reports.

In the Sac City speech, Clinton said U.S. efforts in Afghanistan are more important than ever given the turmoil in neighboring Pakistan.

“I’m very grateful to him and his family,” Clinton said.

In policy comments on war, Clinton received her most sustained applause when she pledged to extricate the United States from Iraq if elected.

“When I’m president I’m going to do that as soon as I’m elected,” Clinton said.

Should she capture the White House in November 2008, Clinton said, she would begin sending envoys to repair what she characterized as “damage” from President George W. Bush’s “dangerous experiment in extremism.”

“The era of cowboy diplomacy is over,” Clinton said.

The former First Lady said she is strongly opposed to a “rush to war” with Iran and defended her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a prudent move diplomatically, not a roll-out of the red carpet for the Bush war machine as some of her critics have suggested.

Switching from international issues to more localized matters, Clinton said that much of New York State is rural, that she understands small-town challenges.

She sees renewable energy as resurrecting the Iowa countryside. Sac County needs a shot in the arm as the population of about 10,700 has dropped some 7 percent from 2000 to 2006.

“How about creating millions of dollars in green-collar jobs,” Clinton said.

Rural areas, she said, stand to profit the most from new energy sources.

Clinton touted a program developed in her Senate office to assist small businesses interested in getting on the Internet — so that their customer base isn’t geographically constricted.

“We need to create that kind of electronic commerce for rural America,” Clinton said.

In her speech Clinton never referred directly to her chief rivals for the Democratic nomination but she did suggest that her health-care plan is superior to the one put forth by Obama.

“Some of them don’t cover everyone,” Clinton said.

She made the case that a Democrat can’t run successfully for the White House without a universal health-care plan — as she sees it as a separating issue with Republicans.

“We’re going to join the rest of the rich, industrialized world,” Clinton said of her health-care plan.

Clinton fielded several questions from the audience including one from an elderly woman who told her she looked “pretty.” And in what is a signature move for the Clintons, she worked the rope line after her speech, signing autographs and speaking with dozens of people one-on-one.

Before coming to Sac City, Clinton discussed an autism plan in Sioux City.

“What I am insistent on is that we can’t have the same arguments we had in the 1990s,” Obama said. “We’ve got to deal with climate change. We’ve got to deal with energy independence. We’ve got to deal with war. We’ve got to deal with revamping our education system and our health-care system.”

In an interview with Iowa Independent, the Carroll Daily Times Herald and La Prensa, a western Iowa Spanish-language newspaper, Obama, an Illinois Democrat seeking the presidency, responded to a question about a recent Atlantic monthly story in which writer Andrew Sullivan suggests front-runners Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani would fill traditional roles in a divisive culture war that has raged since Vietnam.  “She and Giuliani are conscripts in their generation’s war,” Sullivan wrote, “To their respective sides, they are war heroes.”

Asked specifically about the quote, Obama said, “I do think because I’m a new face on the scene that I have an easier time of getting people to work together and listen to each other in ways that I think some of these other folks don’t.”

Obama added, “Washington has been caught up in gridlock for a long time. The country has moved past many of these arguments.”

He said people aren’t voting against him based on “whether I inhaled 30 years ago.”

“They just want some straight answers,” Obama said. In a speech in Audubon, Obama acknowledged that he had tried marijuana as a youth — and that he did inhale.

In the interview, Obama reiterated his differences with Clinton on the issue of whether to remove the $97,500 cap on income subject to the payroll tax that funds Social Security. Obama favors taxing earnings greater than that to shore up the system, while Clinton said such a move amounts to a tax increase that could affect the middle class. The issue emerged in the last Democratic debate and when asked if one difference between himself and Hillary Clinton is that she thinks $97,000 is middle-class money and he thinks it’s a lot of money, Obama said, “apparently.”

“Right now, 94 percent of Americans are paying payroll on 100 percent of their income,” Obama said. “But you have very wealthy people, people in the top 5, 6 percent, who aren’t. And top 1 percent who aren’t.”

On the Republican side, former Gov. Mitt Romney leads with 36.2%, head and shoulders above Rudy Giuliani’s 13.1%, former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 12.8%, former Sen. Fred Thompson’s 11.4%, and Sen. John McCain’s 6%.

The Hawkeye Poll’s methodology has been the subject of some controversy, but in an interview with Iowa Independent, Redlawsk defended himself against his critics.  New American Research Group polls from the beginning of the week show somewhat different results, but the candidate rankings in the two polls vary only slightly.  Consensus remains that Romney is the Iowa Republican frontrunner, and any of the top three Democrats could win the Democratic caucuses.

Another poll, released by the National Wildlife Federation, showed that 69% of Iowa hunters and fishermen believe global warming is occurring.  66% of that group also believe that conservation is at least as important as gun rights.

Tuesday night’s debate between the Democratic candidates in Philadelphia, PA, made for a relatively quiet week on the Democratic side in Iowa.  Obama visited Cedar Rapids Monday for a speech on Social Security and an appearance in front of young people for a forum sponsored by MTV News and MySpace.  In Washington, DC, Wednesday, Clinton announced her endorsement from AFSCME, a union often touted as influential in the Iowa Caucuses.  Thursday, Edwards announced his first major Iowa television ad buy of the 2008 campaign.  Obama and Clinton had announced new TV ads Sunday and Monday, respectively.  Most of the Democratic field did not return to Iowa until the end of the week.

On the Republican side, things quieted down after last week’s Republican Party fundraising dinner, where Huckabee received most of the buzz.  Romney was the only major candidate to appear in Iowa later in the week.  In Marshalltown, he was videotaped telling a crowd that “you probably don’t have a lot of immigrants legally” in Iowa.

Next week promises to be exciting, as the last major cattle-call of Democratic candidates in Iowa, the annual Jefferson Jackson fundraising dinner, happens over the weekend.  In the lead-up to the event, candidates will struggle to build crowds and show strength as the national press corps flies back into town.

[Commentary] Apparently anyone who can lose 110 pounds shouldn’t be taken lightly.

While Mitt Romney’s organizational juggernaut prevailed like the Soviets in hockey back in the day, the headline from the Iowa Straw Poll today is one from hope, both Arkansas (boyhood home of an obesity-beating governor) and message.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee proved clairvoyant with one of his own lines in Hilton Coliseum on Saturday.

“The soil is awfully fertile in the valley,” Huckabee said.

Coming from among the pack, Huckabee finished second in the straw poll with 2,587 votes of the 14,302 cast. Mitt Romney pulled in 4,516.

While the fire-breathing Coloradoan Tom Tancredo rhetorically punched up immigrants, and other candidates just failed to connect (scoreboard, baby), Romney and Huckabee both offered messages that were decidedly optimistic, and in Huckabee’s case, funny.

“A Republican in my state feels about as out of place as a Michael Vick at the Westminster Dog Show,” Huckabee said. If you don’t get that joke you’re not voting in any Republican primaries or caucuses anyway.

Huckabee urged Iowa Republicans to consider “buying the cereal, not just the box.”

In a party of very public Christians that in spite of itself edges ever so close to idolatry in its hero-worship of Ronald Reagan, Romney’s winning ways in Iowa can be traced to more than his wallet. His is  a mixed message of economic opportunity with calls for a stronger military. Sound familiar? Reagan was an actor who learned to play president. You couldn’t find an actor who looks more presidential than Romney. Image does matter, folks, with apologies to the marketing team at Sprite.

Stylistically, both Romney and Huckabee are television-friendly, softer on the eyes and ears, than some of the screamers in the 2008 GOP field who would have been better off as men of another generation debating the Civil War on the House floor.

In the press rooms and outside of Hilton there was speculation about Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo doing well on the strength of his immigration plan. His applause meter appeared to be second. And U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas had the signs in front to make a case for the place spot in this Iowa political horserace.

But Huckabee? A few months ago, former Iowa GOP gubernatorial candidate David Oman e-mailed me and told me to watch Huckabee, that he had this straightforward, likeable way about him. Oman knows a thing or two about Republicans, having worked for both Gov. Terry Branstad and Gov. Robert Ray.

For my part, I saw the battle for second coming down to Brownback or Tancredo with the narrative being that abortion is still king with social-cons (Brownback in second) or that the immigration issue is pre-eminent (Tancredo).

There is another storyline that makes even more sense: Republicans know how to win presidential races.

A ticket with Romney at the top, his seemingly computer-generated presidential looks and what appears to be an honest projection of a better-than-1950s-TV family life, and Huckabee, a guy who can get off a humorous one-liner about dog-fighting and follow it up with religious imagery, is perhaps the one-two punch a dejected GOP needs for fall 2008.

Other strengths for a Romney-Huckabee ticket: Both are governors without the D.C. taint. They complement each other regionally. Huckabee’s evangelical credentials would help Mormon Romney with the base. Most of all, they are going to be hard to demonize, and that could prove strategically decisive if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee as U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley assured Iowa Independent and other media today that would be the case.

Maybe the Iowa Republican activists are on to something with this finish?