Just as Pat Robertson corralled conservative Christians around abortion and lowing taxes to form the Christian Coalition it seems that former Governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will be forming his version of the next generation of conservative Christians.  Tonight I listened into a conference call featuring the former Governor as well as Steve Strang, publisher of New Man Magazine and Charisma Magazine and named one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals in America.  

According to Strang roughly 6,000 people listened into what turned out to be a blatant sales pitch for Strang’s magazines and few books including one that calls Islam "a religion conceived in the pit of hell"

I was hoping the call would reveal some more details on what’s next for Governor Mike Huckabee.  I have been previously intrigued in what he will do next.

While the call did not reveal any hard facts of what his next move will be or what the political action committee will entail, the direction of the questions that were selected underscore some of my thoughts below.  The real nature of the PAC will be disclosed with the launch of his website MikeHuckabee.com.  As of right now the site is "Coming Soon" with a countdown, launching timely on April 15th (tax day).

In my observation the most attention was paid to the issue of the tax structure in the U.S. (besides the self-promotion of Charisma Magazine).  Huckabee has been an advocate of the Fair Tax.  He touted the fair tax as a structural change that would reward productivity and boost the U.S. economy. A small snipet of the plan from Wikipedia:

The sales tax rate, as defined in the legislation, is 23% of the total amount paid, which includes the tax payment itself. U.S. state sales taxes have historically been expressed as a percentage of the original sale price or pre-tax amount, which would be a tax rate of 30%. The effective tax rate for any household would be variable due to the fixed monthly tax rebates that are used to "untax" purchases up to the poverty level. The tax would be levied on all U.S. retail sales for personal consumption on new goods and services. Critics argue that the sales tax rate defined in the legislation may not be revenue neutral (that is, it would collect less for the government than the current tax regime), and thus would not yield enough money for the government.

The 16th Amendment might get in the way of the plan but I think Hucakbee is utilizing this aspect of his agenda to gain more national attention with the subcontext of traditional conservative ideas such as abortion, gay marriage, possibly illegal immigration (that one came up a little bit in the call but gay marriage did not).

I am sure the PAC and his next steps will be to support selected Republicans running for office, including Senator John McCain, whom he said he plans on supporting.  Evidently, he is awaiting instruction from the McCain camp on how he can be of more use for the campaign.  When he brought up Senators Clinton and Obama he believes they will both raise taxes. At this point he nearly compares taxes as moral issue as to slavery, but he stopped just short of making a direct comparison.

This is intriguing because a later question asked about taxes whether "we would continue to be slaves of the IRS?"  Strang once spoke about Lincoln being from the Republican Party and the Democrats were the ones that wanted to continue slavery, with the added caveat that it was 150 years ago.  So, what’s up with the slavery references?

So, it seems that when the nation’s taxes are due, Mike Huckabee will be launching a national political action committee pushing the fair tax plan with some additional maneuvering of traditional conservative Christian values.  While he will probably be helping Senator McCain versus the eventual Democratic nominee he will also more than likely be helping some other members of his party to gain some good will for another run in 2012 if Senator McCain loses in November.  Should be an interesting development to follow in the coming months.