By Carter Clews
Here’s some free advice for former presidential candidate Mike “Get Out of Jail Free” Huckabee: get yourself a lengthy contract extension at Fox News as soon as you possibly can – because your chances of getting elected to anything other than Podunk Dog Catcher just got reduced to somewhere between of zip and zilch.
By now, everyone knows that as governor of Arkansas, Huckabee eagerly took pen in hand to set free the man who would go on to commit a lifetime of crimes – culminating in the ruthless slaughter of four Lakewood, Washington, police officers.
For those Huckabeeites who will strenuously object that, no, Huck did not set Maurice Clemmons free; he just “commuted” his sentence, I have two words: get real. Huckabee knew when he reduced Clemmon’s sentence from 108 to 47 years that the perp was eligible for parole before the ink was even dry on the gov’s signature. So, enough with the disingenuousness — by Huckabee and his faithful followers.
And, while we’re on the subject of faithful followers, let’s clear up another urgent matter here: Mike Huckabee needs to stop giving his fellow ministers a bad rap by copping a Christian plea every time yet another one of the 1033 miscreants he pardoned (including 12 convicted murderers) goes out and commits yet another vicious, vile crime.
We’ve all seen it so often, it’s becoming a caricature of itself. A demented Huckabee pardonee rapes, robs, and/or slaughters some innocent citizen, and Huckabee dons his hang-dog, dewy-eyed, aren’t-I-penitent look, reminds us all that he is – after all – an ordained Baptist minister, and oozes (as he told KUAR in Little Rock):
“I would not deny that my sense of the reality of redemption is a factor. And I don’t know that I can apologize for that because I would hate to think of the kind of human I would be if I thought people were beyond forgiveness and beyond reformation and beyond some sense of improvement.”
Well, Huck, here’s a suggestion as to the “kind of human” you would be: you would be the kind of rational human being who realizes that when you release hardened violent criminals onto society, they might just do something violent. Ya think?
Now, let me offer a disclaimer here, because I want to make sure readers understand that my contempt for Huckabee’s bleeding heart liberalism is not confined only to the fact that he has unleashed a tidal wave of horror on his and his wayward angels’ scores of victims. As I alluded to above, I also deeply resent the repugnant picture he paints of good, decent, level-headed clergymen every time he bleats out his “Baptist minister” alibi.
You see, my father was a Bible-preaching Methodist minister going way back before Mike Huckabee even thought of distorting the Scriptures to fit his own weak-kneed theology. Yet never once did he confuse mercy with justice – or God’s love with man’s laws. In fact, unlike Mike Huckabee, he didn’t excise the passages from his Bible where Jesus violently tossed the money changers out of the temple, or called His enemies “vipers” and “snakes.”
In fact, I’ll never forget the summer of 1958 when – following in the footsteps of the Man whose precepts and practices he embraced – Dad put an abrupt end to the wife-beating escapades of a former prizefighter in the tiny town of Williamsport, Maryland.
It all began one mid-summer Saturday night when a little neighbor girl came pounding on the parsonage door at 1:00 in the morning. “Reverend,” she plaintively cried, “you’ve got to come quick. Daddy’s all drunked up and he’s beating Mommy something awful.” Dad donned his clothes and rushed from the house, not to return until more than an hour later.
I wish I could say the saga ended there. But, it didn’t. Saturday night after Saturday night, the same pathetic episode would repeat itself time and again. Until one day, it suddenly stopped, as abruptly as it had begun.
It wasn’t until nearly 20 years later that I learned what had brought the horror to an end. One of the wife beater’s sons, now a grown man, laid it all out for me: “Night after night,” he said, “your dad would come down and tend to my mother’s wounds. Finally, one night, he said to my sister, ‘Where’s your father now?’ My sister said he was upstairs in his bedroom. ‘Tell him to come down,’ your dad replied.
“When my father came down the steps, red-faced, bellowing, frighteningly angry, your dad went over to him, stuck his finger in his face and said, “The next time you beat her up, I’m going to beat you up. You got it?” And that was the last time my dad ever touched my mom.”
Now, that’s true Christian love in action. That’s “redemption.” That’s “reformation.” That’s a minister doing God’s will: sacrificing himself to save his sheep. What Mike Huckabee did – more than 1000 times, more than three times as often as his three predecessors combined – was pervert the Scriptures to excuse his own bleeding heart and muddled head.
And now, the families of Portland officers Ronald Owens, Mark Renninger, Greg Richards, and Tina Griswold – including the four slain officers’ nine little children – will endure Christmas, and the rest of their lives, bereft of those they loved most. That’s the legacy of Mike Huckabee. And don’t think for one single second that dissimilating charlatan’s love of God or clerical collar had one whit to do with it.
Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News
