It's only a matter of time before the glowing sun that is Newt Gingrich's surge in the polls begins to fade. Once again Romney will emerge as the anointed front-runner, hanging nimbly to his steady 25% in poll after agonizing poll. And when Newt's sun sets, who will take his place? Crazier things have happened, but I don't see Rick Santorum rushing to the front of the pack. Gary Johnson is already considering trading his GOP membership card in for a Libertarian ticket.

I'd say it's more likely that either Texas congressman, Ron Paul, or former Utah governor, Jon Huntsman, will claim the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame slot as conservatives shuffle through their disappointing deck of choices.

I'd have to flip a coin to be sure, but let's pretend for the sake of argument that it's Huntsman. He is, after all, running hard in New Hampshire. He's got a SuperPAC and a billionaire dad. He's an eminently reasonable guy with a charismatic demeanor and presidential good looks. The only thing holding him back so far is the fact that conservatives don't see him as all that conservative.

This isn't exactly fair, though.

Hunstman may be soft on social issues and a believer in global warming, but he's a staunch fiscal conservative. Now that fiscal conservatism is in and neoconservatism is out, his views on our foreign wars will also work to his advantage.

"The President believes that we can tax and spend and regulate our way to prosperity,” Huntsman said at a a campaign stop in a New Hampshire recently. “We cannot. We must compete our way to prosperity.”

And so he's proposing a broad tax reform plan that, while revenue neutral, would dramatically overhaul the American tax code. The plan would eliminate all tax deductions and loopholes, while lower the individual tax rates to 8, 14, and 23 percent.

Huntsman's plan would drop the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent, and eliminate taxes on capital gains and dividends. The idea is to decrease taxes in the productive sector, while making up for lost revenue through closing up all the loopholes.

A simplification of the tax code would be an undeniably good thing, and lowering corporate rates could certainly help spur investment and hiring, but there are problems with the plan. Would it also end the Earned Income Tax Credit? What about the child tax deduction or the mortgage interest tax deduction? Would it levy taxes on healthcare benefits, something we (foolishly) don't do now?

Whatever the merits of each of these individual programs, they are all hugely popular. Many people in the lower and middle class would see their taxes go up, up, up after all these deductions were removed.

Things like the EITC are an efficient way to combat poverty without getting the state too involved. Tax simplification may sound good on paper, but when it comes to voter reaction it's another ballgame. Politics is the enemy of the good after all. And the many millions of Americans who benefit from tax deductions and loopholes represent a powerful tribe of special interests.

So maybe the fiscal conservatism won't actually work in Huntsman's favor after all. But then again, neither would Ron Paul's own even more extreme positions on fiscal issues. Government spending, it turns out, is actually quite popular. It's the taxes we all hate.

That being said, who thought Cain would surge in the polls? Who, after the Tiffany's revelations, thought Newt would recover?

I'm still calling this for Romney, but in the meantime anybody could surge ahead and bask in the fuzzy glow of front-runner status for a little while. Say ... about fifteen minutes or so in electoral time.

Which, to be fair, isn't saying very much.

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