Category Archives: Republican Party

McScandal?

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I’m still trying to piece together the backstory on this morning’s near-allegations that maybe John McCain had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago. What I’ve seen of the backstory is a lot more interesting than the story, which does seem a tad thin.

Marc Cooper writes,

Everyone who knows anyone has been hearing about this story for some months. Back in December, Matt Drudge got wind of it from inside the Times and teased it at the top of his site. We all waited, but the shoe never dropped.

Under what is said to be intense pressure from McCain and prominent D.C. criminal attorney Robert Bennett, who was hired to help deal with the matter, the Times capitulated and held off on publishing the story – offering no explanation, then or now. And if you read through the piece just published, there doesn’t seem to be any new information that the Times couldn’t have had two months ago.

So what, you ask? Just one small detail: In the intervening weeks between the moment when the Times was first going to publish the story and finally did publish the story, the same New York Times endorsed John McCain! And while he’s described in the endorsement editorial as a “staunch advocate of campaign finance reform” he’s tagged in this Wednesday’s news piece as having accepted favors from those with matters that came before the very committee he used to push that reform. And many, many other favors.

More importantly, if the Times had published its expose when it first had it over Christmas, it would have preceded all of the Republican primaries and caucuses. To say it would have changed the dynamic of the GOP race is perhaps the understatement of the decade. You can bet Mitt Romney and even Mayor Rudy are up late tonight gnashing their teeth and pounding their heads against the wall over this one.

The Right, of course, is in Maximum Victimization Mode and whining that the New York Times is mean and out to get them. But Cenk Uygur argues that the New York Times is afraid of the Right.

Conservatives are now charging that the New York Times held off on the story until after McCain had wrapped up the nomination, so they could ruin his chances in the general election. First, this is wrong because if they wanted to hurt his chances of getting elected, they would have revealed this fact much closer to the general election. They couldn’t have done McCain a bigger favor than by waiting to release the piece until after the primaries and way, way before the general.

Since they endorsed McCain in January despite knowing this story – and the clear implications of hypocrisy on campaign finance reform, let alone the other implications – the most likely conspiracy would be that they favor McCain in the election. But I don’t think there is a conspiracy.

I think the far simpler answer is the correct one. The McCain campaign threatened and intimidated them as the Bush team has done on countless occasions and they gave in until someone else was about to release the story. The only thing worse than being bullied by Republicans is getting scooped by your competitors.

The story here isn’t that the NYT is trying to hurt conservatives, it’s the exact opposite – they’re afraid of them. On every occasion that they have had a major story like this, they have held it after being badgered by Republicans. They only print the stories when there are no other options left and the story is about to get printed elsewhere anyway.

See also Gabriel Sherman at The New Republic.

You’ll like the letter sent out by the McCain campaign —

Dear McCain Supporter,

Well, here we go. We could expect attacks were coming; as soon as John McCain appeared to be locking up the Republican nomination, the liberal establishment and their allies at the New York Times have gone on the attack. Today’s front-page New York Times story is particularly disgusting – an un-sourced hit-and-run smear campaign designed to distract from the issues at stake in this election. With John McCain leading a number of general-election polls against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the New York Times knew the time to attack was now, and they did. We will not allow their scurrilous attack against a great American hero to stand.

The New York Times — the newspaper that gave MoveOn.org a sweetheart deal to run advertisements attacking General Petraeus — has shown once again that it cannot exercise good journalistic judgment when it comes to dealing with a conservative Republican. We better get ready for more of the Democrats’ attacks over the coming months as the Democrats pick their nominee, MoveOn.org starts spending their unlimited soft money, and the liberal media tosses standards aside in an attempt to stop our momentum. We need your help to counteract the liberal establishment and fight back against the New York Times by making an immediate contribution today.

John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has led the charge to limit the money and influence of the special interests in politics and stomp out corruption. His life and his record prove just how preposterous the smear by the New York Times really is.

Objective observers are viewing this article exactly as they should – as a sleazy smear attack from a liberal newspaper against the conservative Republican frontrunner. Sean Hannity said, after reading the article three times, “It was so full of innuendo and so lacking of fact, and so involved in smear, I came to the conclusion that the goal here was to bring up a 20-year-old scandal.” Washington attorney Bob Bennett, who was the Democrat counsel during the Keating investigation, said, “This is a real hit job.” Joe Scarborough called the allegations “outrageous.” Even pundit Alan Colmes — not known for his conservative leanings — concludes “this is a non-story.”

Yet, it is there, right on the front page of the New York Times. It is now dominating the cable news coverage. We can only expect these sorts of baseless attacks to continue as we move into the general election cycle. We are going to need your help today, and your continued help in the future to have the resources to respond. We’ll never match the reach of a front-page New York Times article, but with your immediate help today, we’ll be able to respond and defend our nominee from the liberal attack machine.

Sincerely,

Rick Davis

Rick Davis, Campaign Manager

In brief — whine, self-pity, resentment, paranoia, more self-pity, the Times always picks on us. Pathetic.

Feel the Love

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GOP Nominee Probable John McCain was booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. Think Progress has a video. I’m told that Tom Delay appeared on Faux News this afternoon trashing McCain and claiming McCain supporters flooded the room with signs to drown out the boos. How dare they.

Dan Payne wrote at the Boston Globe before Romney announced he was dropping out:

Gathering nuts. Today the national Conservative Political Action Conference opens in Washington; it’s a gathering of right-wing Republicans, luminaries, and one president. Romney needs to wow them; John McCain needs to hire a food taster. If they take a straw poll and Romney wins, it will fire up right-wing radio for days.

At Salon, Joe Conason explains why McCain provokes paranoia on the right.

As Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, James Dobson and their lesser imitators furiously explain, they have strong reasons to distrust “straight talker” McCain, who straddles and shifts incessantly to advance his contrarian political strategy. He has so casually disrespected them and their opinions over the years, showing up routinely on the wrong side of so many of their issues, from climate change to gun control to campaign finance reform to the marriage amendment to the Bush tax cuts to judicial nominations, that endorsing him now would look like a wholesale abandonment of principle.

Moreover, the special interests of the right-wingers’ media panjandrums would be much better served by the defeat of a Republican ticket headed by McCain (especially if Huckabee becomes his running mate). In the aftermath they could argue that their party cannot win when the presidential candidate deviates from their dogma. Their profits and status would be depressed by a moderate Republican presidency, but greatly enhanced by a Clinton or an Obama in the White House.

For McCain to reach beyond the right-wing gatekeepers will be difficult, because rank-and-file conservative activists’ suspicion of McCain sometimes approaches paranoia. But like most paranoids, they have their evidence, too. Latent anger over his past betrayals was provoked into rage by his sponsorship of immigration reform that permitted a “path to citizenship,” better known as amnesty, or shamnesty, on the right. Beyond the issue itself were McCain’s alliances, not only with Sen. Edward Kennedy but with a broad coalition of liberal Hispanic and immigrant organizations.

More ominous still, for those of a conspiratorial bent, is the Reform Institute — the think tank founded by McCain, where senior fellow Juan Hernandez (who once served in the Mexican government) has divided his time between promoting liberal immigration policies and organizing Hispanics for McCain’s presidential campaign. As commentators in the right-wing blogosphere have noted with alarm, the Reform Institute has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from liberal foundations — most prominently the Open Society Institute, whose founder and chief funder is none other than George Soros. (Here I must disclose that I have worked for magazines that received OSI grants — and perhaps that also serves to emphasize the point here.)

You probably know already that George Soros is the Boogeyman.

E.J. Dionne:

Yet whatever divisions the Democrats face, it is the Republicans who confront an ideological civil war in which popular talk show hosts are serving as field generals determined to beat back McCain’s advancing army of Republican dissidents.

Despite his impressive victories, McCain continued to fare poorly on Tuesday among the conservatives who have defined the Republican Party since the rise of Ronald Reagan.

McCain won, as he has all year, because moderates and liberals, opponents of President Bush, and critics of the Iraq war continued to rally to him despite his stands on many of the issues that arouse their ire. And he prevailed because Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney continued to divide the right.

Huckabee became the champion of the Old South, winning in Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, and he nearly defeated McCain in Missouri and Oklahoma. Romney won a swath of states in the Midwest and mountain West.

McCain, in other words, lost the core Republican states and instead piled up delegates in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois and California. All are traditionally Democratic states unlikely to vote for him in November. Rudy Giuliani’s strategy, which was premised on his strength in such places, actually worked — but it worked for McCain.

Better and better.

What It All Means

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I don’t often agree with Mark Steyn — this may be the first time, in fact — but I’ve got to agree with him today.

The real story of the night, when you look at their rallies and their turn-out numbers, is that the Dems have two strong candidates either of whom could lead a united party to victory. Forget the gaseous platitudes: in Dem terms, their choice on Super Duper Tuesday was deciding which candidate was Super Duper and which was merely Super. Over on the GOP side, it was a choice between Weak & Divisive or Weaker & Unacceptable.

Steyn also says,

There was an explicit anti-Romney vote in the south. A mere month ago, in the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire, I received a ton of emails from southern readers saying these pansy northern states weren’t the “real” conservative heartland, and things would look different once the contest moved to the south. Well, the heartland spoke last night and about the only message it sent was that, no matter what the talk radio guys say, they’re not voting for a Mormon no way no how.

The Mormonism may not be the only thing. Four years ago, along with the swift boating, the GOP did a bang-up job characterizing John Kerry as an effete rich snot from (wink, nudge) Massachusetts. If you ask me, Mitt makes John look common, just as he makes John “Breck Girl” Edwards seem like testosterone on wheels. As Skippy says, “super tuesday has come and gone, and about the only thing that has been decided is what a loser mitt romney is.”

We also learned yesterday that southern Republican voters will not follow Rush Limbaugh off a cliff. Heh.

On the Dem side — although I don’t think the final delegate counts are established, but it still seems to be close to an even split between Clinton and Obama. Even so, some of the bobbleheads are already counting out Obama as an also-ran. Clinton won by not losing. California spoke for the nation. And, of course, Democrats lose by being Democrats. Lance Mannion writes,

The blonde, who is tougher in the mornings than I am, checked in at the New York Times website and found that Adam Nagourney has managed to see yesterday’s excitement as a loss for both Clinton and Obama. How did they both lose by winning a lot? Well, they’re Democrats, and the Democrats are divided, while the Republicans are rallying round.

I forgot one of the basic rules of Insider Thumbsucking: Everything that happens is bad news for the Democrats.

Third pot of coffee update: This Times editorial acknowledges that the Republicans look a little divided too. But the Democrats are worse divided. And of course Hillary’s being divisive.

Among us leftie bloggers and activists there’s a lot of back-channel Clinton versus Obama arguing going on in various listservs. Awhile back Michelle Obama said she would “have to think about” supporting Clinton if she’s the nominee. This has been turned into a blanket accusation by some Clintonistas that Obama supporters are losers who don’t understand political reality.

I think everyone needs to chill out. I clearly remember four years ago stumbling into nests of Deaniacs who swore they’d support no other Dem but Dean in the general election. Somehow, by November, this vow had been forgotten.

Clinton supporters paint themselves as pragmatists and call Obama supporters hopeless romantics, but in the past couple of days I’ve had close encounters with some Clinton supporters who were far more hysterical than rational. For example, one told me that a black man couldn’t possibly win in the South. (And Hillary Clinton could?) I’ve also been told Obama will disappoint me. Listen, politicians always disappoint me. I expect it. But the Clintons collectively have left me with a long list of disappointments that I doubt Obama could ever match. There are rumors Obama is some kind of right-wing Manchurian Candidate who will prove to be a Bush clone if he becomes POTUS. I say anyone who actually believes that has gone way beyond hysterical and is heading toward psychotic.

As candidates, both Obama and Clinton have strengths and weaknesses that, as the delegate count suggests, pretty much balance out. I agree with Josh Marshall:

The only arguments for one side or the other being a winner here come down to airy and finally meaningless arguments about expectations. And the result tells a different tale. It’s about delegates. It’s dead even. You’ve got two well-funded candidates who’ve demonstrated an ability to power back from defeats. And neither is going anywhere.

See also Brad DeLong and Jonathan Freedland.

Update: John Cole says,

Obama won more states, won more delegates, improved his numbers with key groups, widened his lead among minority voters, and over-all, outperformed Hillary. Period. The fact that the Clinton established machine has not been able to pull ahead should be a real clear sign of how much trouble they are in right now. This race was Hillary’s to lose, and last night she may have started doing just that. You will hear the Clinton camp talking repeatedly about winning the big prize- California. Winning California is irrelevant, as a Democrat is going to win Cali in the general regardless who it is.

Super Tuesday

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Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Conventional wisdom says the Dem nomination will not be settled tomorrow. In fact, Chris Bowers says it could be that the nomination will be determined not by voters, but by super delegates.

Meanwhile, it’s possible John McCain will sew up the GOP nomination tomorrow. Rush Limbaugh’s head will explode.

According to the McClatchy campaign blog —

It’s an understatement to say that conservatives are not happy that John McCain has emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Radio talker Laura Ingraham today urged a platform fight to make sure McCain wouldn’t get his say on such issues as immigration or campaign finance regulation. Rush Limbaugh has said McCain’s nomination would turnoff so many conservatives it would destroy the Republican Party

Now, Human Events Online compares the early primary states that have launched McCain to the Axis of Evil in Iraq, Iran and Korea.

“The Republican Party has been hijacked,” says the article.

“Over the past month a new Axis of Evil has emerged – not one based in Damascus, Tehran or Pyongyang – but instead in Cedar Rapids, Charleston, South Carolina, Derry, New Hampshire and Boca Raton, Florida. It is the liberal and “independent” voters in these 4 states that have nearly completed a deed that makes Kim Jong Il envious -the near crippling of the American Electoral System.

“These four states have combined their native liberal populism with an imported liberal electorate and have forced the GOP to accept a nominee so distasteful that in more than one poll — the numbers of voters choosing not to vote and those choosing to vote third party actually exceed those who will hold their nose and vote for Maverick, War Hero, Amnesty Supporter, John McCain.”

Damn those voters.

Speaking of unhinged, Jim Nintzel writes at Salon —

Right-wing talking heads, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin, have been seething about McCain for months. Limbaugh warned in January that if McCain gets the GOP nomination, “it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it. A lot of people aren’t going to vote.” …

… That kind of emotional reaction to McCain, if overheated, extends to plenty of other issues: [conservative activist Rob] Haney complains that the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance legislation “takes away freedom of speech as guaranteed in the Constitution.” He’s angry that McCain would support tackling global warming with “all those treaties that turn over our sovereignty to other countries.” And he argues that McCain “has been the darling of the press for years,” masking what he refers to as the senator’s secret liberal record. “It’s an unending litany of items that we find unacceptable in a Republican candidate who would represent Republican values,” Haney says.

In reality, McCain’s voting record in the Senate is by most measures conservative. The American Conservative Union has given him a lifetime ranking of 82 percent, although his 2006 ranking was 65 percent. Conversely, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action reports that McCain voted its way just 14 percent of the time between 2000 and 2006.

However,

… what McCain may need most to overcome the spat with GOP hard-liners is the rallying cry that would accompany a Democratic primary win by Hillary Clinton.

Tomorrow’s vote may or may not clarify the will of the electorate. Ain’t nothin’ gonna clarify the minds of wingnuts.

Demographics

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At the Boston Globe, Scott Helman writes,

They are younger, more diverse, and less rigid in their party loyalty. More of them are women. And they are coming out in droves.

The voters who are shaping the Democratic primary race form a very different electorate than the one that awarded Senator John F. Kerry the party’s nomination in 2004. But while it is evident that voters this year are changing the face of the Democratic Party, the beneficiary of their influence is difficult to predict.

The spike in Democratic voter turnout in primaries and caucuses from 2004 to 2008 is staggering – a 90 percent increase in Iowa, 30 percent in New Hampshire, and 83 percent in South Carolina. Florida Democrats were on pace last night to more than double their turnout from four years ago, while Nevada, whose noncompetitive 2004 caucuses drew only 9,000 people, this year saw 118,000 people vote.

This is great news for America. But there are other demographic groups out there not being heard from. Like, Republican women. Emily Bazelon writes at Slate,

Gender has mattered a great deal in the Democratic race, with women tilting between Hillary (New Hampshire and Nevada) and Obama (Iowa and South Carolina), and voting in larger numbers and by different margins than men. But they haven’t been the key to any Republican victories. In Florida, tonight, they accounted for 44 percent of the vote in their party, compared to 60 percent among Democrats. …

… The virtue of a party without a gender gap is that it’s not dodging the potholes of identity politics. The downside is that it’s muddling along without thinking much about what its women want. Listening to Romney’s and McCain’s speeches tonight, I don’t hear anyone wooing the ladies. Not even in a throwaway sentence or two. …

… What do Republican women want, anyway? They support the Iraq war in far greater numbers than their Democratic counterparts. But they’re just as worried about the economy. Beyond that, and the obligatory pro-life nod, no one seems to ask them.

One suspects the loyal Republican woman, like the loyal Republican gay or the loyal Republican African-American, is so full of self-loathing she’s afraid to ask herself what she thinks.

And then there’s the ignorant yahoo demographic. New York Times reporter Adam Nossiter visits Columbia, Tennessee.

“I wish there was somebody worth voting for,” said Buford Moss, a retired Union Carbide worker sitting at the back table of Bucky’s Family Restaurant here, with a group of regulars, in a county seat that — as the home of the 11th president, James K. Polk — is one of the ancestral homelands of Jacksonian Democracy.

“The Democrats have left the working people,” Mr. Moss said.

“We have nobody representing us,” he continued, adding that he was “sad to say” he had voted previously for Mr. Bush. He was considering sitting out this election altogether. “Anyone but Obama-Osama,” he said, chuckling at a designation that met with mirthful approval at the table.

In interviews around the courthouse square, voters stuttered over Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama in matchups with Republicans, particularly Senator John McCain, whose military credentials give him solid regional armoring. Some white voters voiced outright alarm over Mr. Obama, and though he is a Christian, allusions to his supposed Muslim ties were frequent, as were suggestions that he remained a disturbingly unknown quantity.

White men, in particular, expressed general fearfulness — over a possible terrorist attack, over an unnamed threat from Muslims, over Hispanic immigrants and over the weakening economy. These fears led them to reflect positively on Republican candidates, perceived as more hard-line on most fronts.

“I think our greatest fear is our terrorist enemies,” said Waymon L. Hickman, senior chairman of First Farmers & Merchants bank, whose headquarters building dominates Main Street here.

“You get Peloski up there and they say we’ve lost the war, and that just fuels our adversaries,” said Mr. Hickman, incorrectly pronouncing the name of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

We could spend all day speculating why America’s rural and small town white men are such a fearful lot, or why anybody in Columbia, Tennessee, spends more than 30 seconds a year worrying about terrorist enemies. Part of the problem is that these guys get all their information from Rush and Faux News, obviously. And their heads will explode before they’d vote for either a woman or a black man. These are the guys who will make John McCain a viable contender for the presidency, I fear.

Frankie Parker (A Tale of Two Prisoners)

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Last month Murray Waas reported that as governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee went out of his way to parole a convicted rapist who then raped and murdered at least one other woman.

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.

“There’s nothing any of us could ever do,” Huckabee said Sunday on CNN when asked to reflect on the horrific outcome caused by the prisoner’s release. “None of us could’ve predicted what [Dumond] could’ve done when he got out.”

Right; release a convict with 25 years left to serve because, hey, who knows, he might not commit another crime! Ya never know. Let’s just let ’em all out and see what happens!

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, and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor.

Therefore, he couldn’t possibly be guilty. I guess any girl connected to the Clintons must’ve either lied about being raped or was asking for it.

The case for Dumond’s innocence was championed in Arkansas by Jay Cole, a Baptist minister and radio host who was a close friend of the Huckabee family. It also became a cause for New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy, who repeatedly argued for Dumond’s release, calling his conviction “a travesty of justice.” On Sept. 21, 1999, Dunleavy wrote a column headlined “Clinton’s Biggest Crime – Left Innocent Man In Jail For 14 Years”:

“Dumond, now 52, was given conditional parole yesterday in Arkansas after having being sentenced to 50 years in jail for the rape of Clinton’s cousin,” Dunleavy wrote. “That rape never happened.”

A subsequent Dunleavy column quoted Huckabee saying: “There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime.”

In fact, Murray Waas reported, Dumond had assaulted several women (some possibly not connected to the Clintons!), and many of these women wrote to Governor Huckabee begging him not to release Dumond. But Clinton Derangement Syndrome won out, and Dumond was released. Waas says that Huckabee was directly involved in pushing through the parole.

After Dumond’s release from prison in September 1999, he moved to Smithville, Missouri, where he raped and suffocated to death a 39-year-old woman named Carol Sue Shields. Dumond was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that rape and murder.

But Dumond’s arrest for those crimes in June 2001 came too late for 23-year-old Sara Andrasek of Platte County, Missouri. Dumond allegedly raped and murdered her just one day before his arrest for raping and murdering Shields. Prior to the attack, Andrasek and her husband had learned that she was pregnant with their first child.

Dumond died in prison in 2005, of natural causes, according to Waas.

But then there was Frankie Parker. Frankie Parker was also a prisoner when Mike Huckabee became governor. And Frankie Parker was guilty; no one says otherwise. In 1984, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, he killed his former in-laws and held his ex-wife hostage. He was sentenced to be executed, and after years of hearings and appeals and stays, the execution was scheduled for September 17, 1996. Thus, Parker was on death row when Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy by the Whitewater witch hunters. After Tucker resigned, Huckabee became governor.

What makes Parker’s case unique? One day, while Parker was in solitary confinement, he asked for a Bible. The Bible was the only book prisoners in solitary were allowed to read. A guard–possibly thinking this would be a nice joke– tossed him a copy of the Dhammapada instead. Frankie found Buddhism.

A friend maintains a web site about Frankie Parker. According to this site,

Frankie came to live a simple religious life in a harsh prison environment. He worked daily toward leading a more positive life. From this, Frankie became a peaceful leader on death row. He was sought out by other prisoners for help with spiritual issues. He was an example to all (inside and outside of prison) that life is what you make out of it. By giving Frankie a commutation of life without parole, Frankie, through his example, could have given the death row inmates a glimmer of hope for themselves. Positive change can lead to a quality life even within the prison walls.

In 1993 Frankie saw an article in the local newspaper about the Ecumenical Buddhist Society in Little Rock. He wrote a letter and Anna Cox, the society’s president, began corresponding with Frankie. Soon others were writing him. Frankie kept in close contact by mail with several sangha members for the last few years. His letters were warm, upbeat, encouraging and always contained some teaching relevant to the reader’s life. As an artist, he generously shared his calligraphy and origami flowers, birds, animals, mobiles, etc. with the sangha members. He designed the EBS sweatshirts and T-shirts that were sold by the society. In addition he organized a much larger donation of original works by other prison artists to sell at the EBS auction fund raiser in the fall of 1994.

A Zen priest gave Parker jukai, which is something like confirmation as a Buddhist. Several prominent Tibetan masters visited him. Prominent American Zen teachers, including Philip Kapleau and Robert Aitken, wrote letters on behalf of Parker. According to the New York Times, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa both wrote to Governor Huckabee urging him to commute Parker’s death sentence and let him serve life in prison.

And do you know what the Rev. Mr. Huckabee did? He moved Parker’s execution date from September 17 to August 8 so he would be executed six weeks sooner. And he was.

According to the Venerable Kobutsu Malone, the Zen priest who attended Parker in his last hours,

The greatest blow to our efforts came on July 22nd when we learned that the new Governor, Rev. Huckabee, in a totally unprecedented action, issued a proclamation, his first in office, moving Jusan’s execution date to August 8th! In effect, with his signature, he cut six weeks of Jusan’s life. We were stunned. It was reported that the Governor had met with the family of Frankie’s victims. Jim Harris, a spokesperson from the governor’s office said, “This [date change] was out of consideration for the victim’s family. They’ve waited years and we could determine no reason to delay it more.” [emphasis added]

In other words, Huckabee’s very first proclamation as governor was to execute the Buddhist as soon as possible. Nice. But the serial rapist Dumond (I mean, he was only violating women, right?) could be paroled entirely.

If by some chance Huckabee is the nominee, I want him to explain this.