I like Mike Huckabee. I certainly wouldn’t vote for him, but he seems like a decent human being genuinely interested in doing (what he perceives to be) the righteous thing.
Yesterday, however, in a tragic blaze of bullets, his 2012 presidential aspirations likely ended.
For those who haven’t heard, four police officers were murdered yesterday in Lakewood, Washington. Their names are Ronald Owens, Mark Renninger, Greg Richards and Tina Griswold. They were sitting in a coffee shop when a man walked in, ordered something to eat or drink, whipped out a gun and began firing. It was a horrible massacre, plain and simple.
Today, authorities are looking for a 37-year-old suspect named Maurice Clemmons. He is described as having an “extensive, violent criminal record,” and was recently charged with assaulting a police officer and raping a child.
Clemmons is originally from Arkansas. Nine years ago he was released from prison after his lengthy prison sentence was commuted.
The politician who made that decision? Then-Governor Mike Huckabee.
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For the record, I don’t like this. Prison sentences are commuted on a regular basis. They have to be, in order to keep the system running and prevent the overcrowding of prisons. Surely, had Huckabee known what would transpire, he would have never let the man out.
That said …
Politics is dirty. Filthy. Disgusting. Twenty-one years ago, Michael Dukakis lost the presidency to George Bush on an eerily similar issue—in Massachusetts, some prisoners were allowed weekend passes. One, Willie Horton, used a weekend away from prison to, ahem, kill people. Once this news got out, and was exploited by the Bush campaign (and used as a racial scare tactic), Dukakis was toast. T-O-A-S-T.
So, I predict, is Huckabee.
