Huckabee's Hopes Dashed by Clemmons, See?

Lets face it. Mike Huckabee was never going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. The smooth-talking former minister and faux-populist Arkansas governor doesn't have the economic credentials and foreign-policy experience that the GOP will need in it is next nominee in order to seek to rescue the country from the grips of Obamanomics and Obama's foreign policy disaster.

But Huckabee would have made a go of it had he ran. And he would have provided a distraction that would have drawn media, money and votes from more promising candidates for the GOP nomination. All that changed when Maurice Clemmons killed four police officers in Lakeland WA, near Seattle, the other day while they were filling out paperwork in a local coffee shop.

Clemmons had been released from the Arkansas State prison system nine years ago after then-Governor Huckabee commuted his sentence over the objections of prosecutors. Instantly Clemmons has become a weight around Huckabee heavier even than the one called "Willie Horton" that haunted 1988 Democrat Presidential nominee Mike Dukakis. Unlike Dukakis, who did not personally set Horton free, Huckabee signed the clemency papers that set the stage for Clemmons' parole.

This is not not to say that Huckabee is morally culpable for the evil Clemmons did. After all, as Huck himself points out, "a series of failures" throughout the Arkansas and Washington State bureaucracy led to Clemmons being free to roam the streets of Seattle. But the fact remains that but for Huckabee's signature Clemmons might still be in prison and the children of those four Lakeland cops might still have their fathers.


Luckily, Clemmons was shot dead by a police officer Tuesday morning near Seattle. So its over for Clemmons. And for the families of Clemmons' many victims, who will be spared the agony of a drawn out process of pre-trial motions, courtroom theatrics and post-trial appeals that would have undoubtedly delayed or even prevented the delivery of the justice that these families so richly deserve. (For a chilling account showing just how depraved Clemmons was, click here).


And its over for Huckabee too, at least politically. As blogger Dan Calabrese said, Huckabee may be a good man but he's a lousy leader. His Christian evangelic compassion and belief in personal redemption are admirable qualities in a preacher but are problematic in an executive. Said Calabrese two years ago:


[Huckabee] seems to see his position of authority as a mechanism to impulsively apply his evangelical agenda. As governor, he pardoned or otherwise advocate (sic) the earlier release of more than 1,000 criminals, with beneficiaries including 13 murderers (one of whom went on to kill again), Huckabee acts as though his seat in the state house is license to bestow a Christ-like gift of grace to anyone he chooses.

Even Jesus didn’t cut the thieves down from their crosses. He just offered them a place in Heaven.

I am the last person to weigh in on matters of Christian theology and the concept of grace. But I do think that Huckabee's sense of moral certainty flowing from his religious beliefs has ultimately done him in. His inability to balance his own firmly held views of forgiveness, compassion and grace with his responsibility to protect the common weal apparently led him to gamble on the divine redemption of provably dangerous criminals at the expense of the public's safety.


The Maurice Clemmons affair proves the old adage that to govern is to choose. Motivated by a sense of religious duty and evangelical mission Mike Huckabee chose to dispense justice with a liberal use of his pardon pen. Now his choices have caught up with him, and he will be consigned forever to political purgatory.

But feel not sorry for the Huckster. After all he's got a cable TV show all his own.