The Huffington Post, one of the most left-wing blogs in the blogosphere, There are factual errors in what they have printed. Some of it is outrageously incorrect...Unfortunately, Huckabee offers no example of the alleged inaccuracies.
Ariana Huffington responds
"the Huffington Post just doesn't want to give the whole story of what was going on." Really? Our original story on the Dumond case was over 4,000 words long and offered what even the American Spectator deemed a "detailed, convincingly irrefutable" presentation of the evidence in which HuffPost "backs up every single word." What's more, we included links to a number of never before published documents from the governor's own files.Huckabee is playing to the Republican base, with an absence of facts and a lot of rhetoric blaming Clinton and the left-wingers for ... well, in the absence of any facts from Huckabee, apparently he his blaming them for accurate reporting of an embarrassing event from his past. This is quite clear from his repeated use of Clinton's name and his attack only on the Huffington Pose, when the core of the recent reporting on how he handled the Wayne Dumond cast him has come from Murray Waas.Huckabee also claimed that in a follow up story "the Huffington Post totally misrepresented and just utterly distorted" the statements of Butch Reeves, his former top aide, who told us that, contrary to his former boss's claims, Huckabee had indeed influenced the parole board to reverse its previous rejection of Dumond's release. Huckabee described Reeves as "outraged," and promised that a statement from Reeves to that effect would be posted on mikehuckabee.com today. It just went up, ten hours later.
In the statement, Huckabee's campaign acknowledges the accuracy of the quotes attributed to Reeves in our story, but splits hairs over whether Huckabee's claims that Dumond's conviction was "outlandish" and "way out of bounds for his crime" (brutally raping a 17 year old cheerleader) were in the context of a discussion about "paroling" the rapist or in the context of a discussion about granting him "clemency" or "a pardon."
Even Huckabee appears vague on the semantics he now considers so important, having told Tim Russert in January: "They asked me did I think that he should be paroled, or something to that effect, and I simply said, "I think that his case has got to be given, you know, a serious look." The campaign now concedes he said more than that.
Most important, Huckabee made it clear to the parole board that he thought Dumond should be free. Does it really make any difference in terms of the tragic outcome whether Dumond would be freed through parole, clemency, or pardon? Isn't the point that Huckabee wanted him freed and that the board, which had recently voted 4-1 against paroling him, reversed course three months later and voted 4-1 for his release.
Tellingly, the Huckabee campaign chose to attack only the Huffington Post for our interpretation of Reeves' comments, even though our reporter Murray Waas was joined on the phone call with Reeves by Brian Ross, ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent, who filed a report offering the same interpretation. Yet there is no mention of ABC or Ross in the Huckabee campaign's press release. Why? Is it harder to dismiss ABC as "left-wing," and the charges as part of a partisan agenda?
But none of Huckabee's finger pointing (he mentioned Bill Clinton 12 times while discussing the Dumond case in his press conference on Tuesday) addresses the key questions raised by this tragic story: why Huckabee continued to favor the rapist's release, even after being sent police reports and wrenching letters from several of his victims detailing his horrific crimes (which included raping a woman while her 3 year old daughter lay beside her in bed); and why Huckabee, to this day, continues to insist "No one could have predicted what [Dumond] could've done when he got out" when we can read for ourselves the words of his victims predicting that the man would rape again - and perhaps murder - if released.
It seems to me that he is willing to do or say anything at this time in order to win the Republican nomination for President, and if he can get that, only then is he going to concern himself with the problems he is laying up that will come out to bite him in the campaign for the general election.
The other thing that Huckabee makes clear, as did Mitt Romney yesterday in his "I'm one of you" speech to the Republican religious right, the religious right dominates the Republican Party and will not accept a candidate who is not in thrall to them.
In 2000 George Bush ran the "I'm one of you" campaign mostly under the radar, with the over focus on the "Compassionate conservative" theme for the general public and independents. Except for the momentary threat from McCain, Bush had won the Republican primaries in the "money race" prior to any votes in the primaries, so the exposure of his extremist right-wing religious views were never put on display as then have been this year. This year, with no anointed candidate going into the primaries, the Republican leaders have been unable to reach a consensus before the voters vote in the primaries, and the true extremism of the religious right has been placed on display.
The result is that the Republican leaders have been unable to conceal the warts that characterize the Republican Party. Huckabee? Romney? Giuliani? Thompson? Ron Paul? Tancredo? It's an sick farce. An asylum is missing its inmates. They are all on the stage and they are all off their meds. And Bush and Cheney both fit right in. What kind of organization IS the Republican Party that this is the collection of misfits it throws up as potential leaders for the United States?
Huckabee can be quite charming. He has offered a lot of smiles and sweet words, but his reaction to the journalists beyond his control who expose and question his past has forced him to expose his real personality. He really doesn't like not being in control. It is also becoming clear that he fits in with the misfits presented by the Republican Party.
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