The American Mind

When a Presidential candidate rises in the polls they garner added attention. Media begins to report on them with an intensity they didn’t before. That’s what’s happened to Mike Huckabee. His rise in the polls has caused reporters to dig into his record.

One item Huckabee wants to brush aside is Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist released under Huckabee’s watch as Arkansas governor. After his release Dumond moved to Missouri and killed two people. Huckbabee didn’t give Dumond parole. Instead, in a meeting with one member of the state parole board he said Dumond grew up on the wrong side of town and deserved another chance. Dumond’s victim even went to Huckabee himself to ask he not be released. None of that pleading worked and Dumond was released to commit more heinous crimes.

What makes it worse for Huckabee is his evasion:

As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.

Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee.

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.”

But the confidential files obtained by the Huffington Post show that Huckabee was provided letters from several women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond and who indeed predicted that he would rape again – and perhaps murder – if released.

In a letter that has never before been made public, one of Dumond’s victims warned: “I feel that if he is released it is only a matter of time before he commits another crime and fear that he will not leave a witness to testify against him the next time.” Before Dumond was granted parole at Huckabee’s urging, records show that Huckabee’s office received a copy of this letter from Arkansas’ parole board.

In light of the horrors committed by Dumond it makes Huckabee’s ignorance of the new intelligence estimate of Iran’s nuclear program seem trivial.

James Joyner sort of gives Huckabee a pass because of the nature of retail politics. But he writes:

My guess is that Huckabee isn’t particularly interested in foreign policy. That’s a liability in a president, one would think, but a rather common one, especially at this early stage in the game.

UPDATE: Joe Carter, who is doing rapid response for Huckabee has been responding to Jim Geraghty.

Disclaimer: I work for Friends of Fred Thompson, Inc.