Huckabee continued...But Clinton started it. Yes he did!

The Clinton angle is one I was unclear on, as the victim was a distant cousin, so I was unclear how he made the assumption that there was a frame on this rapist.

Crooks and Liars points to the answers on Huffington Post.

...

While on the campaign trail, Huckabee has claimed that he supported the 1999 release of Wayne Dumond because, at the time, he had no good reason to believe that the man represented a further threat to the public. Thanks to Huckabee’s intervention, conducted in concert with a right-wing tabloid campaign on Dumond’s behalf, Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.But the confidential files obtained by the Huffington Post show that Huckabee was provided letters from several women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond and who indeed predicted that he would rape again - and perhaps murder - if released.[..]

Huckabee kept these and other documents secret because they were politically damaging, according to a former aide who worked for him in Arkansas. The aide has made the records available to the Huffington Post, deeply troubled by Huckabee’s repeated claims that he had no reason to believe Dumond would commit other violent crimes upon his release from prison. The aide also believes that Huckabee, for political reasons, has deliberately attempted to cover up his knowledge of Dumond’s other sexual assaults.

In 1996, as a newly elected governor who had received strong support from the Christian right, Huckabee was under intense pressure from conservative activists to pardon Dumond or commute his sentence. The activists claimed that Dumond’s initial imprisonment and various other travails were due to the fact that Ashley Stevens, the high school cheerleader he had raped, was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor.

...

This is a disturbing notion. Clinton = All bets are off. This is why laughing off the Right's obsession with Clinton is foolish. In AK, there was just a mad obsession with the man.

Holy cow, it’s unbelievable how far the right wing’s obsession about the Clenis goes. Huckabee is desperately trying to put daylight between himself and Dumond because Dumond’s release was all about discrediting Clinton. Again. Hillary was spot on right about that “vast right wing conspiracy”. And the saddest thing is I don’t know that Huckabee’s base would be as concerned about these kind of ethical issues to not vote for him. Do they care about Huckabee’s complete lack of knowledge of the Iranian NIE? Or evolution? Let’s face it, the bar for Republican understanding has been set pretty low.

UPDATE: Huckabee: God Responsible for My Rise in Polls Oy.

Ah, God did it, Clinton did it...Thanks for the reminder of the old reason Huck was creeping me out.


AMERICAblog with more.


And if he wanted to dispel the sense this was part of the anti-Clinton bias of AK Republicans, maybe trying to use Bill Clinton as a scapegoat wasn't the sharpest choice.

Huckabee rape defense: BIll Clinton made me do it

That's the Republican equivalent of the dog ate my homework. GOP presidential
candidate Mike Huckabee spoke today at a press conference about the growing controversy over his role in releasing a convicted rapist who then went on to rape and murder two more women. Huckabee has been giving conflicting answers for days now about the incident, and today came up with a novel excuse: It's Bill Clinton's fault. Six times during the press conference Huckabee invoked Clinton's name, trying to pin the blame on him for helping release the man who raped his cousin. Now, you can throw a lot of hurt at Bill Clinton, but suggesting that he'd help free the guy who raped his cousin, that's pretty far out there even for the far-right Clinton haters. And in fact, Bill Clinton had recused himself from the case because the victim was his cousin.

But even if Bill Clinton helped Huckabee enable the rape and murder of two women (which he didn't), that's the best Huckabee can come up? Clinton helped me do it?

And Huckabee's lament.

Huckabee in August 2007: I felt sorry for rapist

I felt sorry for him, I am sorry people who died and suffered, but...Clinton and the Democrats are the ones to blame.

Sure, he petitioned and pressured the parole board, but how does that place any responsibility on his shoulders?

Oh yeah, it's Bill Clinton's fault. Uh huh. Considering that's how Huckabee got into this mess, by doing the bidding of Clinton-haters who didnt' want to believe that a cousin of Bill Clinton was really raped, it does Huckabee no favors to be now proving that he's a member of the blame-Clinton posse, more interested in bashing Clinton than looking after the welfare of rape victims.

Yet another pass-the-buck Republican presidency, that's all America needs.

Huckabee issues fake passive-voice CYA apology to dead rape victims' families

...

Huckabee is denying any involvement at all in the release of the rapist who then raped and murdered their daughters even though he met with the parole board on the rapist's behalf. The appropriate apology, the real apology, isn't "I'm sorry for your pain (that someone else caused)" - that's what you say when a friend's kid dies and you had nothing to do with it. The appropriate apology when you aided and abetted the rape and murder of two people's daughters is "I am responsible for your daughters' deaths, it was a terrible error in judgment, I was wrong, and I am sorry. What can I do to set things right?"

Huckabee is also saying today, “Nothing I can do or say can reduce their level of grief.” Actually, a real apology, and not a passive-voice CYA non-apology, would be a good start.