From The New York Times,

[Dr. Laffer] has met with nearly all of the top Republican hopefuls, he said, including the long-shot Tea Party hero Ben Carson (“a rock star,” Mr. Laffer said), and Jeb Bush, with whom he served as a pallbearer at the funeral of the Cuban-born millionaire Jorge Mas Canosa, who created a powerful anti-Castro lobbying machine in Miami.

Politicians aren’t experts, Mr. Laffer said. “They give a speech and if anyone boos, they change their speech,” he explained. “They’re living, breathing polls and that’s the way it should be.”

Signing up with any one campaign is unlikely, he said. “I’m pretty old and pretty inflexible.”

Still, Mr. Laffer has helped preside over a series of small dinner parties where candidates like Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, have gotten a primer in supply-side economics and the opportunity to meet with wealthy potential donors, including John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket owner, who picks up the checks.

The latest, with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, took place Thursday night at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan.

Mr. Laffer’s co-hosts include Larry Kudlow, a former Reagan adviser and a CNBC commentator, and Stephen Moore, a flat-tax champion at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Moore has been working closely with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on a new tax proposal, a 14.5 percent flat tax, which he unveiled on Wednesday in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal.