It could rise even higher if consumers seeking to avoid the high sales tax develop a strong black market that sucks money out of federal coffers. Buying in Canada or Mexico would have the same effect.

Combating that black market and keeping tax payers honest in the collection of their prebates would likely require a tax-enforcement agency that would resemble the IRS. The hated taxman that Huckabee invokes would not be dead.

In states where the black population is less than 5%, Obama has a record of 7 wins, 2 losses and 1 undecided (NM). In states where the black population is 20% or higher, he is undefeated at 4-0. However, in states that are between 5-20% black, his record is a fairly dismal 4-10 (with one of those victories being Illinois).

The theory here is that Obama does well where the black population is so low that identity politics isn’t an issue. And, he does well where the black share of Democratic primary voters is so high that he needs few white voters to carry the day. He has the hardest time in states that are black enough to have some racialized politics, but without enough black voters to completely tip the scales.

This corresponds to the long held observation that black candidates in general do best in either fairly non-black environments or in heavy black environments but struggle with the in between, where white majority fears that they will be the tool of an aggrieved constituency. (Some, of course, have broken that mold like Doug Wilder, and Carol Mosely-Braun and Obama himself).

For Obama’s upcoming contests, this bodes well for Maryland, D.C., Virginia, Nebraska and Vermont and maybe Rhode Island, but not so well for Ohio and Texas.

The Challenge For McCain And Conservatives At CPAC Today
John McCain meets some of his fiercest critics today at CPAC, with a 3 pm ET speech that will provide a critical moment for both the candidate and the activists. Most have focused on what McCain has to do to reach out to the conservatives, but fewer understand that the movement has a decision to make as well regarding its future and its relevance.

First, let's focus on McCain. The Senator will not win an election by suddenly gainsaying everything he has done over the past eight years since his last presidential campaign. He will have to focus on the future, including the future of the badly-needed immigration reform that everyone wants but no one can define to consensus. McCain will need to commit to nominating judges to the bench that will not legislate from there.

He has to end the false dichotomy of "patriotism, not profit" and the little war of words on Wall Street, a kind of populism that conservatives rightly reject. He will also need to recast his focus on global warming to acknowledge that the US cannot unilaterally handicap itself economically and allow more manufacturing to disappear overseas thanks to even more expensive domestic energy production.

If McCain can do all of that, he will have come more than halfway to meeting the conservatives. If the latter doesn't show up at that halfway point, though, they risk more than a lost election. They put their credibility at risk as a coalition partner for rational governance.

Despite the size of CPAC, the conservative wing of the Republican Party is one of several factions within a big tent. Within that movement exists sub-factions as well. In order to have influence over public policy, any movement has to align itself with other compatible factions to form a governing coalition. That means sharing decisions and sometimes subordinating some issues in order to hold the coalition together, including leadership decisions.

Responsible coalition members understand that dynamic. Factions that refuse to cooperate in a coalition wind up marginalized and pushing the coalition in the opposite direction. If McCain wins the nomination without conservatives, he will push towards the center in the general election. Win or lose, the conservatives will have no influence on public policy either way, and will not be trusted as coalition partners for a long, long time afterwards.

Everyone has a lot at stake today. Conservatives owe McCain a hearing today, and they owe it to themselves to carefully consider whether they want to be taken seriously in the future.

The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

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Some observers say that the piece, published today, was not ready to roll. On Wednesday evening, much of the cable news commentary focused on the Times' heavy use of innuendo and circumstantial evidence. This morning, Time magazine managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published such a piece. Since the story broke, the McCain campaign has been doing its best to pin the story on the Times and make the media angle the focus.

Indeed, when TNR started reporting on the whereabouts of the story on February 4th, all parties seemed intent on denying its viability.

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Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an email to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me--speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."

Late in the day on February 19, Baquet sent a final draft of the Times piece to Keller and Times managing editor Jill Abramson in New York. After a series of discussions, the three editors decided to publish the investigation. "We published the story when it was ready which is what we always do," Baquet told TNR this morning. He added: "Nothing forced our hand. Nothing pushed us to move faster other than our own natural desire that we wanted to get a story in the paper that met all of our standards."

When the Times did finally publish the long-gestating investigation last night, the McCain camp immediately tried to train the glare back on the Gray Lady. In fact, McCain advisers stated that TNR's inquiries pressured the Times to publish its story before it was ready so this magazine wouldn't scoop the Times' piece. "They did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles -- they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad," Salter told reporters last night in Toledo, Ohio.