Quin Hilyer, a former Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial writer, writes for the conservative National Review a good summary of all the reasons Mike Huckabee makes a poor 2016 presidential candidate. A “reality check,” he calls it. For example:
* His poor judgment on executive clemency decisions as Arkansas governor.
* His advocacy for the release of rapist Wayne Dumond who went on to kill again. Hilyer gives chapter and verse to rebut Huckabee’s dishonest excuse-making on Dumond.
* His advocacy for freedom for multiple cop-killer Maurice Clemmons.
* His record as a tax-increaser. (A plus for me, if not for Club for Growth and teabagger types.)
* His ethical blind spots.
* His failure as a party builder while governor. He mostly was concerned with building his assets.
* The meanness that lurks close to the surface of his genial demeanor. Hilyer notes the former Baptist preachers’ anti-Mormon digs at Mitt Romney.
Huckabee apparently thinks time has inoculated him from all this, as evidenced when he disingenuously talked about Dumond in an interview with Jake Tapper. Hilyer thinks not:
Huckabee told Tapper on Friday that people will no longer believe bad things about him because he has spent so much of the past six years hosting TV and radio shows. The public now “knows him” better, he said.
Huckabee’s Music Man routine will fool people for only so long. His image would never stand up to the blitzkrieg the Democratic attack machine would unleash if he were the nominee — in part because so many of the attacks against him would be rooted in reality.
ALSO: Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote after the weekend gathering in Iowa of right-wing hopefuls that Huckabee seemed like “yesterday’s news.”