Huckabee in 2012?

[BoMac]

I'd think that true moderates - on either side - are generally at the more intelligent end of the scale, and thus understand that just about everything from healthcare policy to foreign policy to economic policy are really, really complicated and sit well and truly in a grey area, not a simplified screaming black or white, with us or against us area, and so would like their news to come with at least a bit of news. Therefore, not watching Fox or MSNBC at all.

This.

I agree with you 150%.

 

[BVS]

true, it will get worse.

<>

The overwhelming majority of experts disagree...

 

[Irvine511]

It seems the Obama people see Giuliani on the radar,
they are urging Patterson not to run.

1. Giuliani appears in drag for fun
2. Giuliani has had several divorces, and even moved in with a gay couple and their shiz-tsu afterwards
3. Giuliani has had a colorful and varied sex life
4. Giuliani believes in killing unborn children if it's convenient for the mother

DOA in the primaries, especially now that the moderates are gone and the base is enraged by Beck et al.

 

[Flying FuManchu]

I think Giuliani could make a run for governor if Patterson stays.

 

[Irvine511]

I think Giuliani could make a run for governor if Patterson stays.

with this, i agree.

 

[bigjohn2441]

saw CNN saying something about Palin running in 2012 and some republican saying that would lead to a disasterous loss or something like that.

 

[diamond]

the <> contenders for 2012=

 

[bigjohn2441]

 

[Flying FuManchu]

The Republican party is doomed.

 

[BVS]

Jindal made a fool out of himself on national TV with his "rebuttal" he's dead in the water.

I still think many conservative "christians" will have a hard time voting for Romney.

And I have no clue who the other two are...

 

[diamond]

And I have no clue who the other two are...

go figure

 

[BVS]

go figure

I canceled my subscription to the Republican Men's calender, it just got too racy.

Seriously why would I know them by picture alone, I read and listen I don't look at pictures.

 

[Flying FuManchu]

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of MN and Eric Cantor Republican Minority Whip. No one knows who Pawlenty is and Cantor has no charisma and comes off "weak" imo. They are no saviors of the Republican party.

 

[INDY500]

Zombie Reagan

And as zombies eat brains his running mate could only be...

the one person immune to such attacks...

all together now...

Sarah Palin.


Happy days are here again

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Looks like Huckabee commuted the 95 year prison sentence of that guy who is a person of interest in the murder of four police officers in a coffee shop in Washington state. They thought they had him in a house but he got away somehow.

Oops. Unfortunately he was also released on bail in WA despite eight felony charges, including third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.

 

[Irvine511]

this is very good news ... for Sarah Palin.

 

[deep]

Huckabee always had a liberal side.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I saw his show recently and he has a guitar strap that says Huckabee in big giant letters.

 

[zonelistener]

the <> contenders for 2012=

He started strong in Minnesota...but has recently pandered to the national party and has "flip-flopped" on his own stances in doing so.

If he stood his ground and ran with his own thoughts, I think he would do well, but lose support from the national party. The PARTY is the issue.

 

[jesseu2]

Looks like Huckabee commuted the 95 year prison sentence of that guy who is a person of interest in the murder of four police officers in a coffee shop in Washington state. They thought they had him in a house but he got away somehow.

Oops. Unfortunately he was also released on bail in WA despite eight felony charges, including third-degree assault on a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child.

My parents live 30-40 min from Lakewood area where this horrible thing occurred and I feel just sad for the families.. I'm home for the meantime and its been all over the news here, just terrible this psycho got out of jail on Nov 23 but it stems from Huckabee still............

Huckabee's commutation record - First Read - msnbc.com

these three paragraphs just stood out:

"Bill Clinton, who served as governor of the state between 1979 and 1992, issued a total of 426 pardons and commutations, the Arkansas Leader pointed out in the middle of Huckabee’s tenure in 2004.

Republican Frank White and Democrat Jim Guy Tucker issued 39 and 42, respectively. By the end of his 10-and-a-half years as governor, Huckabee had issued 1,033.

As of 2004, Huckabee had issued more pardons than the leaders of six neighboring states combined -- Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Missouri -- in the preceding eight years."

1,033 pardons!!!!

holy crap!!

To think that people were supporting him and that he might run in 2012 is beyond me. A member of his staff resigned over this mess.

 

[A_Wanderer]

He believes in the life changing power of Christ, it's a pity that he doesn't take other criteria into consideration for pardons.

 

[INDY500]

He believes in the life changing power of Christ, it's a pity that he doesn't take other criteria into consideration for pardons.

You mean like the from judge in the case and a 5 - 0 recommendation by the parole board. Not to excuse Huckabee, but there is a whole trail, as there so often is with these career criminals, of bad decisions by judges, wrongly set bails, mistakes by prosecutors and unwise pardons by politicians.

The governor's political aspirations may well take a hit but not because of his religious believes except perhaps among those with a knee-jerk bigotry towards religion.

 

[A_Wanderer]

From the religion hating Associated Baptist Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (ABP) -- The Dec. 1 police shooting of suspected cop killer Maurice Clemmons has renewed allegations that, as governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee paid more attention to preachers and professed jailhouse conversions than prosecutors and parole boards in deciding to commute the sentences of prisoners.

Clemmons, suspected of gunning down four police officers at a coffee shop in a Lakewood, Wash., strip mall Nov. 29, was one of 1,033 people who were pardoned or had sentences reduced during Huckabee's 10 1/2 years as governor. That was twice as many clemencies as were granted by his three immediate predecessors combined.

While many of Huckabee's pardons were recommended by parole boards, in some he overrode objections of prosecutors, judges and victims' families and followed recommendations of Baptist preacher friends who vouched for petitioning inmates by claiming they had been born again.

The previously best-known allegation of misplaced mercy became an issue in Huckabee's presidential candidacy in 2008. Shortly after taking office as governor, Huckabee supported parole for Wayne Dumond, a man sent to prison for raping a distant cousin of Bill Clinton.

A pastor, radio commentator and conservative political activist in Fayetteville, Ark., named Jay Cole organized other evangelicals in the state to lobby Huckabee for Dumond's release. Cole was a friend of the governor's.

Huckabee's behind-the-scenes efforts to pressure the Clinton-appointed parole board to set Dumond free won praise from right-wing politicians and pundits, who claimed the convicted rapist had been framed by the Clintons' political machine.

After his release, Dumond raped and killed a young woman in Missouri. He died in prison in 2005. Police believed he was also responsible for another murder after Arkansas set him free.

In another case, Huckabee announced commutation for Glen Green, an Air Force sergeant sentenced to life in prison for raping and killing a teenage girl. Another preacher friend of Huckabee's, longtime and well-known Baptist pastor Johnny Jackson, reportedly described Green as a "humble Christian man" and insisted the killing was an accident. Prosecutors who put Green behind bars in 1974 argued that he was capable of killing again. Only protests by the victim's family and media attention forced Huckabee to rescind commutation of Green's sentence.

Questions about whether the former Baptist preacher's beliefs about the possibility of spiritual redemption might cloud his judgment as commander in chief have resurfaced as Huckabee tops polls for potential GOP presidential candidates in 2012.

Comparisons have already begun between Clemmons and Willie Horton, a convicted killer and rapist released in a Massachusetts prison-furlough program supported by then-governor Michael Dukakis. Allies of former President George H.W. Bush ran ads during his successful 1988 campaign against Dukakis using Horton to convince voters that the Democratic nominee was soft on crime.

In his 2000 clemency petition, Clemmons appealed to Huckabee, a former pastor and past president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, for mercy.

Clemmons claimed the crimes for which he was then imprisoned were committed when he was 16, during a seven-month spree after he moved from Seattle to a crime-infested neighborhood in Arkansas and fell in with the wrong crowd.

"I come from a very good Christian family and I was raised much better than my actions speak," Clemmons claimed. He said his mother's death changed his heart, because he now had to live with the knowledge that after all he had put her through he had missed an opportunity to make her proud of him before she passed away.

"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 new start," Clemmons petitioned. "Now, I'm humbly appealing to you for a brand new start."

The Arkansas Leader, a Little Rock-area newspaper that began writing about Huckabee's commutations in 2004, said the governor appeared to have a penchant for releasing inmates he happened to meet or who had connections to his family as well as for those vouched for by a fellow minister claiming the prisoner had accepted Christ. As Huckabee's reputation for granting clemency spread, the number of convicts applying increased.

"We never quarreled with his compassion but with his judgment," the newspaper opined in a Dec. 1 editorial. "If a convict could get the governor's ear and convince him that he had found Jesus and turned his life around or he could get a preacher to intercede with the governor, he was apt to go free."

Huckabee, now host of a TV talk show on Fox News, issued a press release Nov. 29 blaming the "senseless and savage execution of police officers" on a "series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State."

"If I could have known nine years ago this guy was capable of something of this magnitude, obviously, I would never have granted a commutation," Huckabee said Nov. 30 on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor."

Even before news broke that he had commuted the sentence of Clemmons, Huckabee told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" Nov. 29 it is "less likely than more likely" that he will run for president.

"The reason I wouldn't is that this Fox gig I've got right now, Chris, is really, really wonderful," Huckabee told Wallace. "It's easy to say, 'Oh gee, don't you just want to jump back in it?' But jumping into the pool, you gotta make sure there is some water in it."

Associated Baptist Press - Did Huckabee rely too much on faith in making pardon decisions?

 

[diamond]

One should never lose equilibrium when in a position of authority.
There is a reason why justice should never rob justice; nor justice rob mercy.

Huck actually robbed justice by misguided mercy.



<>

 

[2861U2]

It's a little early for anyone to say his chances are done...

If Reverend Wright couldn't sink Obama, I have a hard time believing anything can sink anybody anymore.

 

[Irvine511]

If Reverend Wright couldn't sink Obama, I have a hard time believing anything can sink anybody anymore.

GWB laughed and mocked a woman he then sent to death.

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker's] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?' "

"What was her answer?" I wonder.

"Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."

National Review Online's Washington Bulletin

this guy murdered 4 cops. Wright didn't kill anyone.

not saying Huckabee is done, but the comparison you've made is silly.

 

[BVS]

If Reverend Wright couldn't sink Obama, I have a hard time believing anything can sink anybody anymore.

Are you serious?

Take a serious look at your life. I mean a serious look at your life. You will find that we all have questionable associations, we've made questionable statements, etc...

YOU have made some VERY questionable statements in this forum(not just politically), but I do not judge you as a whole by those statements.

I have certain people in my life that others find repulsive. In fact if I didn't know them better, I would find them repulsive, but I've known them long enough to know that there is much more to them then what the "public" sees. Some of us were raised by abusive parents but still love them...

My whole point, we are not always defined by our associations. I will never defend everything Wright says, but there are MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger issues than one's pastor.

 

[VintagePunk]

Well that, and the fact that it's two very different circumstances. Obama's supposed transgression is by association, so, he's a degree away from someone who said some things that some people didn't like. Huckabee actually did the bad thing here, it's all on him.

Pretty overt difference, no? Exactly how biased does one need to be to find these two things equally bad?

 

[BVS]

Well that, and the fact that it's two very different circumstances. Obama's supposed transgression is by association, so, he's a degree away from someone who said some things that some people didn't like. Huckabee actually did the bad thing here, it's all on him.

Pretty overt difference, no? Exactly how biased does one need to be to find these two things equally bad?

 

[maycocksean]

Huckabee's not my first choice, but I highly doubt it'll take much to beat Obama next time around.

I'm wondering if you're able to consider that Obama might do well. . .ever. Or do you just dislike him that much?