Huckabee: Dead Pol Walking?

CHRIS PUMMER: Political pundits spent the week after Maurice Clemmons’ alleged killing spree in Washington trying to pen Mike Huckabee’s obituary.

As the governor of Arkansas, Huckabee commuted Clemmons’ 108-year prison sentence for a string of robberies and burglaries committed when he was 16-years-old.

The reverberations in the media were amplified by the fact that another prisoner who’s sentence was commuted by Huckabee, Wayne DuMond, also committed violent crimes after his release from prison.

The talking heads joined with those hunched over keyboards in the blogosphere to write off Huckabee’s chances in for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. After all, how could a base that favors law-and-order types vote for a man perceived to be soft on crime?

I say it’s too early to carve dates on Huckabee’s political tombstone.

Huckabee came back in the media, first to rightfully chastise it for focusing on his future while the families of the victims in Washington grieved. But also to blast the critics who accused him of making an unforgivable error.

In doing so Huckabee may have even come off as presidential.

Huckabee stuck to his guns. He raised the relevant facts in the Clemmons case. Namely that there were good reasons for the commutation, including Clemmons’ youth and race. Also that his was not the final say, that Clemmons also had to make it past the parole board, and that the system could have returned him to prison for parole violations after his release in 2000.

Again, the critics will keep saying that soft-on-crime doesn’t work with GOP voters, and by talking about race Huckabee hit a double-whammy.

That’s not what really matters, though. What does matter is that Huckabee is not backing down from his decisions.

Even if there were many political lessons to be drawn from George W. Bush, the most important is that the greatest quality a politician can have is his ability to carry himself with strength and certainty.

It would have been far more damaging if Huckabee had gone on cable news, looked into a camera and started blubbering about how he made a horrible mistake. That is simply a message that can’t win, because it calls into question your fortitude and your judgment. Just ask President John Kerry about his Iraq War vote.

By defending his decision, Huckabee is making his case that his judgment was sound even if the eventual outcome was tragic. And he didn’t run away from making a tough decision, which was the right decision.

When the current media storm dies down, that’s going to be what most impartial observers remember about Mike Huckabee.

But even if you don’t think the willingness to stand up for a decision made in the face of political risk can’t keep Huckabee in the presidential race, the playing field certainly will.

If his top rivals for the GOP nomination continue to be Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, Huckabee still stands a good chance as neither Ronmey or Palin seems to have put together a plurality of voters big enough to squeeze him from the race.

He might also add during a debate that both avoided tough decisions during their relatively short stints as governors.

It might be moot as Huckabee was said to be leaning away from a 2012 run before the killings in Washington. And maybe this just takes him off the fence. But if Huckabee chooses to sit this one out, it’s not going to be because this sad series of events knocked him out of the race.

HOWARD MEGDAL: Mike Huckabee’s Political Career, 1992-2009.

Chris makes valid points about Huckabee making the best of what was an untenable situation. Clearly, given the alternatives- either hiding or coming out with a Gob Bluthian “I’ve made a huge mistake”- Huckabee chose right.

But he didn’t in any way solve this problem. His commutation of Maurice Clemmons won’t be decided on the merits. It will be decided in 30-second ads.

And in a 30-second ad, the Clemmons pardon slam is to-the-point and devastating. His response is reasonable. But it doesn’t fit in a 30-second ad.

Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter- Huckabee won’t have the money, in all likelihood, to go one-on-one with whoever is trashing him with it. Palin and Romney, for all their flaws, are far better at raising money than Huckabee is. That inability, largely as a result of his feud with the Grover Norquist part of the Republican Party, is likely to be what keeps him out of the 2012 race.

But if he gets in anyway, he’ll be battered by this. In a general election, this would be problematic. With the GOP electorate? Forget it. Mr. Huckabee’s own revolving-door prisons are a death sentence with no possibility of commutation.

Tags: 2012 presidential race, GOP, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under News & Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.