Romney’s savings proposal would eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for middle-class families. He said he knew what pay range he considers middle class, but will announce those figures “in a speech to be delivered.”

The call for making permanent the Bush tax cuts — which benefit only the most wealthy people in this country — is not new with Romney, or many other Republicans for that matter.

When asked by a man in the crowd about the so-called “Fair Tax,” Romney said that “taxes that are fairer and flatter are a good starting point,” but that the Fair Tax that’s been proposed in Congress has drawn criticism from retailers and those in the home sales industry, so that it would need to be studied more.

On tax relief, Romney also wants to eliminate the death tax and lower corporate taxes.

Go Upstate

This isn’t as ambitious of an agenda I’d like to hear regarding taxes, but it’s okay.  It’s a bit ridiculous that candidates even have to talk about making the Bush tax cuts permanent, but that is just another failure of his administration when you consider his own party controlled the Congress.  I definitely like the elimination on dividends and capital gains, although with my luck in investing gains aren’t something I usually have to deal with.

On the Republican side, Thompson, not yet an official candidate, had the support of 22 percent of S.C. GOP voters, followed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani at 18 percent. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was third with 17 percent and U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona was fourth with 11 percent.
The Republican results have a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.

Here are the full results of both polls.
REPUBLICANS

1. Thompson — 22 percent
2. Giuliani — 18 percent
3. Romney — 17 percent
4. McCain —  11 percent
5. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — 7 percent
6. U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas — 3 percent
7. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — 2 percent
8. U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California — 1 percent
9. U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado — 1 percent
10. Undecided— 18 percent

The State

Walt Jones isn’t wrong about this:

Republicans lost their congressional majority by losing their way, Jones said.

“I regret that we lost the majority,” Jones said. “But the reason that we lost the majority was the unpopularity of George Bush and the fact that we did not stick to our principles. Republicans are not supposed to be big spenders.”

The Daily Reflector

But take note of the paragraph right before his statement:

Working in a Congress run by Democrats hasn’t been hard for Jones, who said he largely gets along with members of the other party. He noted that his staff has had productive talks with Democratic leaders about a proposal to raise health standards on imported seafood. Another Jones initiative — construction of a national monument honoring military dogs that served in Vietnam — has made its way into a defense bill, he added.

A monument honoring dogs …………

Certainly that’s an expenditure of great importance to our nation’s defense because the good Congressman wouldn’t be lecturing his party on frivolous spending while partaking in the fray, would he?