Politico has this article out on how Conservatives unleashed heck on Mike Huckabee for granting clemency to the man accused of killing 4 police officers just nine years after clemency was granted.
The conservative blogosphere unleashed a torrent of criticism against Mike Huckabee Monday after a man whose sentence he commuted as Arkansas governor was suspected of gunning down four police officers in Washington state over the weekend.
Maurice Clemmons, whom Huckabee granted clemency to nine years ago, remained at large after local police in Lakewood, Wash. mistakenly thought they had him trapped in a house early Monday. Clemmons is reported to have shot the officers as they were sitting at a table in a local coffee shop.
While many details of the murders were still unclear Monday, leading online conservative voices were quick to pass judgment on Huckabee, whose 2008 presidential campaign was forced to respond to accusations that he was too lenient with violent criminals during his years as governor.
“The man being sought by police was granted clemency by former GOP Arkansas Mike Huckabee despite his violent history and vehement protestations from prosecutors and victims’ family members,” wrote conservative Michelle Malkin on her widely read blog. “This disaster is just one of Huckabee’s ill-considered clemency legacies.”
“This isn’t Huckabee’s first Horton moment,” Malkin continued, referring to the convicted murderer who raped a woman during a weekend furlough program supported by then-Massachusetts governor and later Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. Willie Horton was featured prominently in damaging ads from George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign painting the Massachusetts Democrat as soft on crime.
On his conservative RedState blog, Erick Erickson wrote that the shooting “is going to be extremely problematic for Governor Huckabee.”
