Willie Clinton, Willie Horton and Huckabee ~ By Tom Tancredo

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

By Tom Tancredo Posted: December 05, 2009 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 It's safe to say that Mike Huckabee's presidential future is done. The nail in the coffin is the revelation that as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee commuted the sentence of serial felon Maurice Clemmons, who recently gunned down four police officers in cold blood in Washington state. Clemmons is not the first future murderer to be let go by Huckabee. In 1998, he let loose convicted rapist Wayne DuMond, who went on to murder Carol Sue Shields. In his tenure as Arkansas governor, Huckabee helped free 1,033 criminals. His three successors combined freed less than half that number. Huckabee responded to the Clemmons murders by blaming prosecutors, the parole board and other officials. He made irrelevant quibbles about how he did not technically pardon Clemmons but rather commuted his sentence to make him eligible for parole. But no matter how he wants to spin it, had he not intervened on Clemmons' behalf, four brave police officers would be alive today. Voters do not look very kindly on politicians who are soft on murderers and rapists. Many commentators make the obvious comparison of Huckabee and Clemmons to Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton. As governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis heavily promoted the weekend furlough program that allowed convicted murderer Horton out on the weekends. While on furlough, he brutally raped and assaulted a woman. During the 1988 presidential campaign, Al Gore (who ran in the Democratic primary) and then George Bush Sr. used Horton to showcase Dukakis' soft-on-crime approach, with great success. But it might be more useful to contrast Huckabee's record on law and order to the 1992 Democratic nominee for president, his fellow Arkansas governor, slick Willie Clinton. After learning how unpopular Dukakis' position on crime was, Clinton prominently flew back to Arkansas during the campaign to sign the death warrant of Ricky Ray Rector. Clinton said Democrats "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent." Compared to Huckabee, Bill Clinton looks like Charles Bronson. READ FULL STORY >