RIP, Mike Huckabee's political career.

[gridlore]

http://crooksandliars.com/stella-barkwell/huckabees-commutation-program-apparen

The suspect in the slaying of 4 police officers in Washington state, Maurice Clemmons of Lakewood reaped a dream benefit from former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. He was banged up for decades as a repeat violent offender, and Governor Huckabee commuted his sentence over the protests of prosecutors in the case.

At the age of 18, Clemmons was sentenced to 60 years for theft and burglary charges. He was serving 48 years for other violent crimes. During trials in which he was the defendant, he apparently exhibited some more eyebrow raising behavior, which included reaching for a guard's gun during transport, and threatening the judge.

Because the judge did not recuse himself from that trial and a series of other civil rights violations, several charges against Clemmons were dropped (State of Arkansas v Maurice Clemmons).

Even with all that history, Huckabee, citing Clemmons' youth at the time of the commission of the crimes and incarceration, commuted his sentence after he'd served 11 years on sentences totaling 95 years of jail time. He remained on parole and committed more violent crimes. He was arrested, the paperwork in the cases was bad and the prosecutors did not refile.

Governor Huckabee has a history of questionable and politically motivated pardons and paroles. But with this, any chance he ever had of becoming President died alongside those four officers in Washington. Those of a certain age may well remember the Willie Horton ad. Michael Dukakis did not start the furlough program (that was a Republican by the way) nor did he personally approve of Horton being granted a furlough. But that image was enough to sink his campaign. Make no mistake, Governor Huckabee looked at a man who had been sentenced to 95 years for violent crimes and let him out of jail.

His political hopes are ashes. He's done. Which means the standard bearer for the GOP in 2012 is Mitt Romney; who is unacceptable to the teabaggers for many reasons. Unless GOP chairman Michael Steele somehow manages to heal this rift you're looking at a split GOP with Sarah Palin running on the Constitution Party ticket with massive backing from the right-wing and Romney trying to marshal the center-right and moderates away from Obama.

Comments

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

A healthy democracy requires at least two functioning political parties.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Oh, something will emerge from the ashes. The modern Republican Party was born from the ruins of the American Whigs.

[kengr]

Alas, this isn't the first guy he's pardoned that has done something nasty.

http://elfs.livejournal.com/1171228.html?thread=6209564#t6209564

I don't know

[capplor.livejournal.com]

What about that "It's alright if you're Republican" thing that keeps going around?

[caraig.livejournal.com]

I wish I could agree, but... Republicans have bounced back from worse before. Heck, look how long Mark Stanford has still held on to the governorship, and it doesn't look like he's going to get evicted anytime soon, even with his own party trying to get him out.

Ironically, Palin running at the head of a Constitution Party for president in 2010 would be positive on many, many levels for me. I LIKE the idea of more than two political parties, and if it takes a fruitbat like Palin energizing the the fringe right to make another party, so be it. (Not that they'll do any better than Perot did, but, still.) Meanwhile maybe some saner heads can come into power in the Republican party and there can be some reasonable dialogue from that side of the aisle.

I firmly believe that it is only with active, constructive, energetic but respectful debate between conservatives and liberals, can this country ever really thrive. As it is right now, all we get on the right is a noise machine, and all we get on the left is too few senators like Bernie Sanders and Al Franken.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Governor Sanford has held on because while Americans love to act scandalized at the sexual exploits of our leaders, nothing ever really comes of it. The bigger issue in South Carolina is that he vanished without taken the steps to leave someone in charge of the executive branch.

I'd love to see a viable third party as well. Sadly, the last two centuries have shown that such parties tend to form around an extreme wing of an existing party, and do nothing but split the vote allowing the "common foe" to win. See the recent Congressional election in the NY 23rd for an example of this. A seat that had been solidly Republican since the Civil War is now held by a Democrat due to the moderate/far-right split in the GOP.

On the whole I prefer the parliamentary system. At least there you get more consensus-building and the ability to support more than one party than our system allows.

Next Presidential race is in 2012, but I got your point.