Reality Check on Huckabee
"...Huck’s bizarre fondness for
extravagant executive clemency...a woman says that her pregnant daughter was
murdered by a man named Wayne DuMond, an already-convicted rapist-murderer who had been released from prison on Huckabee’s watch."
"...Huck responded: “The only action I had in the case of Wayne DuMond was to deny clemency. He was commuted by Jim Guy Tucker, my predecessor. . . . [and] Bill Clinton approved that. . . . [Again,] the action that I took in the case was actually to deny a commutation.”
Huckabee is about as accurate in this account as the little boy who insisted he didn’t steal the cookie from the cookie jar; it was just his hand that had done it...."
"...It is a matter of public record that
Huckabee repeatedly advocated releasing DuMond from prison. Yes, he denied official executive clemency — but only after the state parole board had granted parole...."
"...Several parole-board members told reporters, on the record, that
Huckabee both personally and through his aides and appointees had pressured them to grant DuMond’s release. Before then-governor Huckabee appeared in front of the board, it had voted 4 to 1 against parole; after his appearance, the board switched to 4 to 1 in favor of release."
"...the whole mess was par for Huck’s course. The AP has reported that
Huckabee “had a hand in twice as many pardons and commutations as his three predecessors combined.” With those high numbers —
1,033 by the AP’s count, 1,058 according to the Arkansas secretary of state — there have of course been recidivists. Some, such as DuMond, were deadly. Apart from DuMond, the most notorious was
Maurice Clemmons, who in 2009 murdered four police officers in Washington State. Huckabee had commuted his sentence nine years earlier “over the protests of prosecutors.”
"...
Huckabee’s strange sympathy for hardened criminals makes him even more anathema to “law and order” conservatives than he is to supply-siders such as the Club for Growth, which again this month (as it did in 2007 and 2008) virtually declared war against his candidacy because of what it calls his
“big-government record” of tax hikes and spending increases...."
"...Huckabee also had
a long, long record of ethical scrapes (some of which bordered on the kinds of activities for which former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell was just convicted). Further, as our colleague John Fund reported that same autumn, Huckabee
wasn’t exactly known as a good manager or team player, either. As the incomparable
Phyllis Schlafly told Fund then, “He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas and left the Republican party a shambles.”..."
"...
His image would never stand up to the blitzkrieg the Democratic attack machine would unleash if he were the nominee — in part because so many of the attacks against him would be rooted in reality...."
