During last night's debate, Mike Huckabee came off as a pretty charismatic fella. He expresses his faith without being a dick about it. He pays lipservice to issues like poverty and the environment. His rhetoric is all warm and fuzzy and compassionate.
He seems like the kind of guy who could appeal to the low-info suburban housewife demographic. Or so I thought.
If Huckabee somehow winds up climbing into the top tier, we can easily beat him back down. Just say "Wayne Dumond".
Wayne Dumond is the CONVICTED RAPIST that Huckabee got released early thanks to his gubernatorial influence. After his release, Dumond raped and killed a woman in Misourri.
I've read a couple of profiles on Huckabee, but I've never come across this before. I just happened to be watching Democracy Now!, and Amy Goodman was interviewing an investigative reporter who clued me in.
The details are even more damning. Huckabee declared his intention to commute Dumond's sentence for the first crime, but there was enough public outrage that he didn't have the guts to. Instead, he lobbied the parole board on Dumond's behalf, and once Dumond was released, he acted as if he wasn't the driving force behind the release.
Here's the synopsis from wikipedia:
Huckabee has also come under criticism for his handling of the case of Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist who was released during Huckabee's governorship and subsequently sexually assaulted and murdered a woman in Missouri following his release. Dumond's case had attracted national attention in the mid 1990s from critics of President Bill Clinton who felt the former Arkansas Governor had been too harsh with Dumond because Dumond's victim was a distant Clinton relative.
According to the journalist Goodman interviewed, the young woman was such a distant 'relative' that Clinton MIGHT have met her once. The Huckster was just scoring political points with Clinton-haters... By defending a rapist.
Even before taking office, Huckabee met with Dumond's wife and privately announced his intention that Dumond be set free, stating his unhappiness with the way Clinton had handled the case. On September 20, 1996, Huckabee publicly announced his intention of commuting Dumond's sentence. There was strong opposition to Huckabee's plan, leaving Huckabee in a difficult situation politically. On October 31, 1996, Huckabee met privately with the parole board to talk about the Dumond case. Some members of the board have since stated that they were pressured to re-examine and vote in favor of Dumond's parole. On January 16, 1997, Dumond was granted parole, just five months after he had been rejected. Huckabee released a statement saying, "In light of the action of the board, my original intent to commute the sentence to time served is no longer relevant." Huckabee has denied influencing the parole board in any way, but acknowledges some responsibility for signing Dumond's parole.
What's more, a reporter for the New York Post defended Dumond by falsely claiming that he had been exonerated by DNA evidence.
God. Damn. Letting out a convicted rapist to curry favor with the conservative base, then denying involvement. What a class act.
What are the takeaways from this chilling tale?
- Mike Huckabee isn't a good leader (or a good guy), he's personally responsible for the death of a young woman, and he isn't a viable '08 candidate.
- The Republican smear machine can be used to silence critics, and to defend convicted rapists. No wonder they want a pardon for Scooter. That's small bananas compared to rape.
[Update]
Wow. What a shitshow. This is just one of those stories that kind of makes you lose faith in human nature...
From phillygal in the comments:
"In early March 1985, with Wayne awaiting trial, his wife, Dusty, wrote a letter to a local newspaper defending her husband and blasting Sheriff Conlee.
Only days later, Wayne DuMond was sitting at home, drunk, when two men broke in, hog-tied him, and made him give one of them a blowjob—"just like you made her do," the perp snarled. Then they castrated him with a knife.
One of them, DuMond later said, chortled, "Mr. C would be proud." They left him to be discovered by his children.
Sheriff Conlee strolled into the DuMond home a few hours later. By his own court testimony, related in Reel's book, Conlee scooped up DuMond's testicles from the evidence scene and put them in a matchbox. He drove home, dumped the balls into a fruit jar, and then sped over to Stevens's funeral home. There, Stevens and funeral home employee Regan Hill were waiting. Hill poured formaldehyde over DuMond's balls. Clinton's cousin Stevens recounted later in a deposition that the sheriff said to him, "Here are DuMond's testicles. Do you want to see them?" Stevens, continuing his testimony, recalled, "Of course, they are looking at me, so that was it."
Over the next few days, Sheriff Conlee proudly showed the jar of DuMond's balls to several people. Eventually, he flushed them down a toilet."
That's insane and awful. Still, Huckabee showed a complete lack of leadership, morality and integrity.