The conservative blogosphere unleashed a torrent of criticism against Mike Huckabee Monday after a man whose sentence he commuted as Arkansas governor was suspected of gunning down four police officers in Washington state over the weekend. | REUTERS The right hammers Huck over shooting

The conservative blogosphere unleashed a torrent of criticism against Mike Huckabee Monday after a man whose sentence he commuted as Arkansas governor was suspected of gunning down four police officers in Washington state over the weekend.

Maurice Clemmons, whom Huckabee granted clemency to nine years ago, remained at large after local police in Lakewood, Wash. mistakenly thought they had him trapped in a house early Monday. Clemmons is reported to have shot the officers as they were sitting at a table in a local coffee shop.


While many details of the murders were still unclear Monday, leading online conservative voices were quick to pass judgment on Huckabee, whose 2008 presidential campaign was forced to respond to accusations that he was too lenient with violent criminals during his years as governor.

“The man being sought by police was granted clemency by former GOP Arkansas Mike Huckabee despite his violent history and vehement protestations from prosecutors and victims’ family members,” wrote conservative Michelle Malkin on her widely read blog. “This disaster is just one of Huckabee’s ill-considered clemency legacies.”

“This isn’t Huckabee’s first Horton moment,” Malkin continued, referring to the convicted murderer who raped a woman during a weekend furlough program supported by then-Massachusetts governor and later Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. Willie Horton was featured prominently in damaging ads from George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign painting the Massachusetts Democrat as soft on crime.

On his conservative RedState blog, Erick Erickson wrote that the shooting “is going to be extremely problematic for Governor Huckabee.”

“Of course, a lot of folks said the last guy was Mike Huckabee’s ‘Willie Horton,’ Erickson continued. “How many Willie Hortons can one man have?”

Huckabee sought to distance himself from Clemmons in a statement posted on his political action committee’s website late Sunday, blaming “failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State.”

“This is a horrible and tragic event and if found and convicted the offender should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Huckabee said. “Our thoughts and prayers are and should be with the families of those honorable, brave, and heroic police officers.”

At the age of 18, Clemmons was sentenced to 60 years in prison for burglary and theft – a sentence which he was slated to serve in addition to the 48 years he was already serving on five felony counts, including bringing a handgun on school grounds.

Citing Clemmons young age at the time he committed the crimes, Huckabee commuted Clemmons’ sentence after the convicted felon had served 11 years. Since getting released on parole, Clemmons has faced additional criminal charges—including at least eight felony charges in Washington, where he moved in 2004, according to local press accounts.

Few of Huckabee’s allies—including candidates he has endorsed for the 2010 campaign and his former campaign manager—responded to requests to speak to POLITICO about the fallout from the shooting. But on conservative blogs, Huckabee came under sustained attack.

Numerous bloggers used the incident to remind readers that the former Arkansas governor faced criticism during the 2008 presidential primary for granting a pardon to convicted rapist Wayne DuMond. Like Clemmons, DuMond returned to a life of crime, earning a second conviction before dying in prison in 2005.

Michael Goldfarb, a former aide to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign and currently a blogger for the Weekly Standard, said Huckabee has suffered through a “brutal 24 hours” since the shooting, which came on the heels of his remarks to Fox News Sunday that he is “less likely,” rather than “more likely,” to run for president in 2012.

Goldfarb picked up Malkin’s criticism, telling POLITICO that the incident is Huckabee’s “second Willie Horton.”

“It was the worst week Huck’s had since he lost South Carolina in ’08,” Goldfarb said.

“Of course Huckabee couldn’t predict that the convict would shoot police officers, but the exercise of executive clemency goes right to judgment in a way that is very clearly understood by voters,” Ed Morrissey, a widely-read blogger on the conservative site Hot Air, wrote in an email. “His primary opponents will use it against him, and I'd guess that such an attack would be particularly effective with social conservatives.”

Former Huckabee press aide Joe Carter wrote on the blog for the Institute on Religion and Public Life that the story undercuts the former governor’s strengths as a candidate.

“Ironically, what makes Huckabee such an appealing Presidential candidate—his empathy for all people and genuine belief in the individual—is also the trait that will prevent him from ever reaching the White House,” Carter wrote. “His experiences and intuitions that served him well as a minister of the gospel were not always applicable in of governor of a state. The unfortunate reality is that for politicians, unlike pastors, there are limits to compassion.”

Conservative blogs were not the only corner of the Internet where Huckabee took a pounding. The popular Drudge Report website provided a prominent link to a Seattle Times story on Clemmons’s disturbing criminal history accompanied by the headline, “Huckabee granted clemency to man wanted for questioning.”

The former governor’s Wikipedia entry was altered midday to identify Huckabee in all caps as “THE IDIOT” who “RELEASED THE COP KILLER MAURICE CLEMMONS.”

Republican operatives and politicians contacted by POLITICO said the incident is already proving to be damaging.

One well-known GOP strategist with presidential campaign experience said the shooting is “pretty devastating” to Huckabee’s political future.

Mark Corallo, a veteran Republican communications consultant, added that since Republicans “are supposed to be the law and order, tough on crime party – it hurts [Huckabee] plenty.”

While former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney used the DuMond story to attack Huckabee during the bitterly fought presidential primary, none of Huckabee’s prospective 2012 opponents have singled out the former governor in the wake of the murders.

Spokesmen for Romney, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did not respond to requests for comment on Clemmons.

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, posted a brief message about the shooting on her Twitter feed while stopped in Richland, Wash. as part of her ongoing book tour, but made no mention of the clemency granted to the suspected shooter.

“While in Washington state today my heart goes out to the WA police officers gunned down so tragically & senselessly,” Palin wrote. “God comfort the families.”