As Howard Dean appears closer and closer to locking up the Democrat nomination for President, an increasing number of people are starting to question his fiscal policies, and concluding that Dean would significantly raise taxes on the middle class.

This fear is based on an analysis of Dean's proposals by the anti-tax group "the Club for Growth," which argues that the Dean tax proposals would:

Raise taxes on 109 million Americans by roughly $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years;
Roughly double federal income taxes on the middle class;
Raise taxes by $2,472 a year on a typical middle-income family of four;
Raise the small-business tax rate from 38% to 55%.
Add greatly to the complexity of the tax code

Based on their analysis, the Club has began running TV ads on this topic in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Dean has reacted as he typically does...with anger. The Club for Growth described Dean as having "howled in protest" over the ad, while the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that "Dean responded with his own ads saying he was falsely attacked by conservatives."

Unfortunately, for Dean, it's not just conservatives who are attacking his plan. Dean's fellow democrat, John Kerry has also stated that Dean's plan would raise taxes on the middle class, with candidates, Lieberman, Edwards and Clark expressing similar views.

Furthermore, the "nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate'" group FactCheck.Org has weighed on in Dean's proposals, and finds that the Club for Growth is correct:

independent, nonpartisan calculations show that Dean's call to repeal the Bush tax cuts really would mean big tax increases, often exceeding $1,000 even for middle-income families. The increases would be especially severe for those with children under age 17.

The last time the Democrats nominated a candidate who everyone knew would raise their taxes, it was twenty years ago, and the candidate was Walter Mondale. In fact, Mondale--unlike Dean--admitted that he would raise them....and lost forty-nine out of fifty states to Ronald Reagan.

Given recent events in Bush's favor--the economic recovery and the capture of Saddam--and the specter of a tax-hiking Democrat running against a Republican incumbant with strong national security cache, one has to wonder if it isn't going to be 1984 all over again.