To start: Max Brantley from the Arkansas Times has a good overview in Salon. Huckabee and his wife showed an avaricious side, unencumbered by any sense what is or is not tacky:
Three decades after the Huckabees' wedding, his wife registered at department stores so their new home, post-governor's mansion, could be stocked with gifts of linens, toasters and other suitable furnishings. In early 2007, our reporting also prompted the former first lady to decline dozens of place settings of governor's mansion china and Irish crystal that had been purchased with tax-deductible contributions to the Governor's Mansion Association, nominally set up to improve the mansion, not to buy going-away presents for former occupants. (Huckabee's governorship ended on Jan. 9, 2007.)
Huckabee even went so far as to block a retarded teenage girl (raped by her stepfather) in Fort Smith, Arkansas, from getting Medicaid funds for an abortion. Note that Federal law requires funding in a rape case.
But there's even a hardcore conservative opposition to Huckabee from the American Spectator, if you don't want to read what Max Brantley wrote.
Probably the most lurid mistake Huckabee made was to push the parole board in Arkansas to release Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist, who in the past had testified to helping beat a man to death with a hammer. Basically, since Dumond had raped a distant cousin of Bill Clinton's, Huckabee thought the guy was framed, and went against the advice of many of his own people to release this man. Who moved to Missouri, and killed another woman. Huckabee's belief that Dumond was framed was one shared by the brainiacs over at Free Republic.com... and they are now ashamed of their advocacy for the rapist.
There's enough links there to keep you reading for a while. Read it now, and wait for Romney oppo team to slip this stuff into the media. |
