Estonia has cropped up somewhat surprisingly as a topic of conversation for the upcoming presidential elections in the United States, as Republican candidates try to drag the media’s spotlight away from the front-runner, Donald Trump. The neurosurgeon Ben Carson was asked in last night’s Republican debate what he would do if Russia attacked the country while he was president. Carson used the opportunity to launch what he most likely thought was a blistering attack on Russian president Vladimir Putin, calling him a “one horse country.”
The quote itself, however, was somewhat confusing. “We ought to fight them on the economic basis because Putin is a one-horse country, oil and energy. And we ought to fight them on that level.” He then went on to suggest the United States put armored brigades in the whole Baltic region and holding military exercises there. The Russians, he claimed, are “terrified by the saber-rattling.”
Carson, of course, has fallen from favor in the eyes of Republican voters and is unlikely to win the nomination. Ted Cruz, however, is a front-runner in the pack thats following Trump, and he too has been speaking about Estonia. Cruz said the United States should follow the flat tax model adopted by Estonia in 1994. Cruz is championing the idea of abolishing corporate income tax and replacing it with a flat 16 percent value added tax, while reducing personal tax rates from seven to just a single rate: 10 percent.
