Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I recall reading, some time ago, from the keyboard of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga himself, a grudging, fearful eulogy of Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. "Scary good," if I recall, was the phrase the Kosissimus used.

Kos pays more attention to this inside-baseball stuff than I do, so maybe he's right. Huckabee recently came to my attention again, though, in this item:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/14/huckabee_could_face_hurdles_from_the_past?mode=PF

Huckabee could face hurdles from the past
Parole of rapist haunts campaign

WASHINGTON - To Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister, former governor, and GOP candidate for president, being a good Christian is about redemption and forgiveness .... [T]here is one man Huckabee believed deserved a second chance, convicted rapist Wayne Dumond.... Dumond's case is notorious in Arkansas. In 1984, he raped a 17-year-old girl. While awaiting trial at his home, he was castrated by, he said, masked intruders. Later, after Dumond went to prison for life, some people in Arkansas saw the sentence as excessive, especially given his mutilation.

Huckabee was one, and, after becoming governor in 1996, he announced his desire to commute Dumond's sentence.... The following year, Dumond committed the Missouri slaying. He died in prison in 2005.

...Stevens, the rape victim, is a distant cousin of Bill Clinton. When he was Arkansas governor, Clinton refused requests to reduce Dumond's sentence.

Life's little ironies, right? The hammerhead fundamentalist Huckabee made the mistake of trying to be, well, a Christian. I seem to recall the Founder made quite a point of forgiveness.

Mr and Ms Clinton, on the other hand, are justly famed for capping a retarded guy, who saved his dessert to eat after his execution. Nothing soft, Christian, or sentimental about them.

So remind me -- who's the lesser evil here? I keep losing track.