Is Huckabee finished?
Mike Huckabee is scrambling to deflect the criticism he deserves for freeing Maurice Clemmons, the alleged killer of 4 Washington police officers.
Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State. He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990, making him parole eligible and was paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time. He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term, but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him.
Not one word acknowledging that Huckabee all but turned the key and set Clemmons free, that it could not have happened without Huckabee’s support.
I’ve no problem with mercy and compassion for the sincerely remorseful, but the uncomplicated truth is that Pastor Mike got played.
Huckabee has proudly declared on many occasions that he disdains the separation of church and state, insisting that his strict Baptist piety should serve as the bedrock of public policy. Nowhere in his record as governor was the influence of religious zeal felt more heavily than in the distribution of pardons and commutations, as his own explanations have indicated. During those years he granted more commutations and pardons than any governor during the previous four decades, many of them surely justified as a response to excessive penalties under the state’s draconian narcotics laws. But others were deeply controversial, especially because so many of his acts of mercy appeared to depend on interventions by fellow Baptist preachers and by inmate professions of renewed Christian faith.
No doubt word spread among the prison population that the affable governor was vulnerable to appeals from convicts who claimed to be born again. Clemmons too was among those who benefited from Huckabee’s tendency to believe such pious testimonials. “I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak,” he explained in his clemency application in 2000. “I’m still ashamed to this day for the shame my stupid involvement in these crimes brought upon my family’s name … I have never done anything good for God, but I’ve prayed for him to grant me in his compassion the grace to make a start. Now, I’m humbly appealing to you for a brand new start.”
Preachers are fine for consoling the bereaved, scolding country simpletons whose idea of a big time is getting drunk and beating the ol’ lady, running soup kitchens — but never, never-ever-ever trust some moron who believes in Creationism, and that the Bible is journalism, with grown-up stuff.
But, No, Huckabee is not finished. The simpletons who go for his schtick will regard this imbecilic display of ‘compassion’ as proof of his Christian high-mindedness, not naivete, and criticism of him as just one more example of the way that Satan implacably stalks the Virtuous.
