GOP presidential candidate and former House speaker Newt Gingrich said on Sunday that Herman Cain has a “good chance” at winning the 2012 Republican nomination for President but cautioned that Cain’s chances of securing the nomination would depend on how well he sell his controversial “9-9-9″ tax reform plan.
“If [Cain] can explain a 9 percent sales tax so people decide they want it, he has a good chance to be the nominee,” Gingrich said on CNN’s State of the Union.
But Gingrich warned that explaining his fellow Georgian’s plan – which would establish a 9 percent corporate income tax, 9 percent personal income tax and a 9 percent national sales tax – could be more difficult than it seems.
“If, however, in New Hampshire, for example, where they have no sales tax at all and no mechanism for collecting it, or in Iowa where senior citizens are going to say, wait a second, as my 79-year-old mother-in-law said on her Social Security, in her fixed income she’s now going to pay 9 percent more? … As people look at 9-9-9 and disaggregate it, it gets to be a lot harder sale, I think,” Gingrich said.
Meanwhile on Sunday, Cain sought to blunt criticism of his proposed plan and downplayed a recent report citing economists who say the plan would hurt many poor and middle-class families who pay little or no taxes under the current tax code.
“Some people will pay more, but most people would pay less,” he told NBC’s David Gregory.
