Recently, freshman Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe signed into law the largest tax cut in that state’s history: a 50 percent reduction in the state grocery tax. The Arkansas Policy Foundation has helped to move that idea along, publishing on the topic since 2002; a State Policy Network member, APF made the issue its top fiscal priority in 2007. A February 13 Wall Street Journal editorial highlighted APF’s work: “The Arkansas Policy Foundation estimates that a family of four will save $234 a year on grocery bills alone, a significant savings in a state where the average taxpayer shells out $3,088 a year in state and local taxes.” In citing the APF, the WSJ simply followed in Beebe’s two-year old footsteps; in 2005 when Beebe served as the state’s attorney general, he cited APF executive director Greg Kaza’s economic research in a formal opinion. If smart, the Democrats could be akin to New Zealand’s Labour Party of yore in terms of economic intelligence. As Rupurt Darwall wrote in the Hoover Institution’s April & May 2003 Policy Review, “the left-of-center Labour party [sic], elected in 1984, deregulated, privatized, [and] cut industry and agriculture welfare….” The key words here are, “if smart,” and they apply to Republicans not just Democrats.