My "Thoughts" on Mike Huckabee

Last December, I posted an article on my blog about Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who is widely considered to be a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. After explaining why Huckabee is likely to win his party's top prize (a theme on which I elaborate here: http://riskinghemlock.blogspot.com/2011/02/election-2012-my-predictions.html), the piece goes on to explore the candidate's dark past, one that arguably disqualifies him from serving as president.

In response to this, I found this comment on my message board from a "Gary Walter":

Yours "thoughts" do not change my view at all. I will support Huckabee for President.

Here is a reposting of those "thoughts" for you to enjoy. The sections involving why I believe Huckabee will be nominated have been omitted due to their contextual irrelevance here. A superior verson of them can be found in the aforementioned link, although those who want to read the original article in its entirety can find it here (http://riskinghemlock.blogspot.com/2010/12/republican-presidential-candidate-in.html).

My question to you... do you think these facts are important?

While polls vary as to whether Barack Obama can defeat him, there is no question as to the fact that Barack Obama must defeat him.

There are plenty of reasons why this is the case. We can start with Wayne DuMond, an Arkansas man who was sentenced to thirty-nine years in prison (reduced from an initial life plus twenty years) after he brutally raped a seventeen-year-old girl. Because the evidence that he had committed this crime was irrefutable, normally his case wouldn’t have attracted any special attention.

However, there was a catch – unbeknownst to DuMond, the girl he’d raped was the third cousin of Bill Clinton.
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Normally this wouldn’t have made any difference. However, several right-wing extremists decided to spread rumors that DuMond was innocent, a claim that – despite its absolute and obvious falsehood – was fervently embraced by those who hated Clinton as president.

Foremost among them was Mike Huckabee, who not only commuted DuMond’s sentence less than ten weeks after becoming governor, but even skirted federal law by tampering with the parole board (which had twice voted to deny DuMond parole) so that it would decide in his favor.

Less than a year after DuMond was released, he raped another woman. This time, he also murdered her.
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This may be the most abhorrent thing Huckabee has done, but it certainly isn’t the only one. He also has a history of sexism (1998 – he signs a full-page advertisement in USA Today saying that women should “submit graciously” to their husbands), racism (1993 – he speaks before a white supremacist group known as the Council of Conservative Citizens), and bigotry against Mormons (2008 – he claims that Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers). The group for which he has reserved his worst bile are homosexuals, whose sexual orientation he has compared with incest, who he has claimed are committing moral sins comparable with lying and stealing, and who he partially blamed for the spate of school shootings in the ‘90s in his book Kids Who Kill. He has even argued that allowing gay marriage would threaten the survival of civilization.

Finally, there is the threat that Huckabee poses to one of America’s most basic and important liberties – religious freedom, as protected by the separation of church and state.

From a speech delivered in his 2008 presidential campaign:

I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards…

As a Jew, I know from personal experience the danger that exists when people hold such opinions. I can still remember being the child who was victimized by anti-Semitism – who had quarters thrown at his head and swastikas drawn on his textbooks, who was told by his friends that Jews worshipped the devil and were responsible for the death of Christ. I even remember being dragged into a lake by a group of my peers, although the part where they held my head under water and chanted “Drown the Jew” has, mercifully, been blotted from my memory.

Hence I know how to respond to Huckabee’s support of theocracy:

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights.

That line isn’t mine, by the way. It was written by Thomas Jefferson.

Now that we know what the Sage of Monticello would think of Mike Huckabee, only one question remains – what do you think of him? To anyone who has considered supporting him for president, have these facts changed your opinion?

This isn’t my challenge to you. This is America’s challenge to you.