The Texas governor's proposal is intended to be everything a conservative could want -- so it's telling that it preserves the mortgage interest deduction

Kevin Drum aptly summed up Rick Perry's latest campaign proposal by noting that "it sounds less like a tax plan than a big ol' stew pot of right-wing applause lines." Take a look at it for yourself: "The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents," Perry explains in the Wall Street Journal. "My plan also abolishes the death tax once and for all... we will eliminate the tax on Social Security benefits....We will eliminate the tax on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains..."

Can I confess something? I don't care whether you love or hate the plan. I just want to point out one grating component. After months of the conservative rank-and-file insisting that the financial crisis was caused mostly by the government, and its anti-free market subsidies that brought about a housing bubble, it's noteworthy and disappointing that a red meat candidate doing his utmost to please the base includes in his "flat tax" the preservation of the mortgage interest deduction.