Huckabee the dominionist theology candidate?

• Clemmons dead.
• Huckabee pardon pattern.
• Huck pardons himself

"Unfit for command" writes Frank Schaeffer about former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. At Brad Blog, the former Religious Right leader says:

It is clear that Huckabee is unfit for any national office and was unfit to ever be a governor. It is also clear that his record of insane irresponsibility was well known by the evangelicals that supported him for theological reasons in the 2007 primaries leading up to the '08 race.

Schaeffer argues that Huckabee is a zealot whose blizzard of clemencies/pardons was a "direct result of a theology known as "Dominionism" (or "Reconstructionism") where believers want to not just believe their religion privately but "take back America for God" in other words rule on the basis not of American law but the Bible."

Some of Huckabee's commutations, pardons and associated actions make no sense and his explanations tend to be confused, characterized by blame-shifting and denial. Yet it is readily seen that Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, was unduly responsive to the requests of Baptist ministers. For example, Huckabee granted clemency to Glen Green over the objections of the Post-Prison Transfer Board, not for substantial reasons, but apparently because Green's minister interceded on his behalf. Green's minister argued that "the murder was an accident and Green was forced to confess." Garrick Feldman of the Arkansas Leader could find no reason to believe the confession was coerced and wrote:

But if [Huckabee] read the confession and still considers Green deserving of parole, he's certainly unfit to hold office. Who would free a madman who beat an 18-year-old woman with Chinese martial-arts sticks, raped her as she barely clung to life, ran over her with his car, then dumped her in the bayou, her hand reaching up, as if begging for mercy?

Joe Conason at Salon builds an argument. As does David Waters at OnFaith, although he reaches the misguided conclusion that "Huckabee is no zealot."

Huckabee strenuously denies that his decision to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons was faith-based, but there is considerable evidence it was. Dan Gilgoff reviews it in brief. Atheist PZ Myers is even more synoptic while dealing with the importance applying real mercy within our criminal justice system.

Huckabee's response at RedState that "Religion had nothing to do with the commutation" is a ludicrous denial of the available record of events. It makes even less sense than his denial of the power of ordinary human conscience and of our collective allegiance to reasonable social order with the hyperventilating argument that "Soldiers and police officers are the line between us and anarchy."

Nor does Huckabee's recourse to denial and blame-shifting blunt Schaeffer's overarching argument. The public record [like the parole documentation [.pdf]] and weight of accounts [Murray Waas 2002 Arkansas Times article,The Arkansas Leader series, Mahablog, Jeralyn] is with Schaeffer when he writes:

In Huckabee’s more than 1000 pardons of criminals that prosecutors and victims objected to in Arkansas Huckabee most often cited his belief in “redemption” as his "reason." This belief was a result of Huckabee’s extreme and literal born-again fundamentalist views about people’s path to God.

Republican reaction to Huckabee and his arguments will demonstrate whether Schaeffer is right when he says:

It seems to me that Huckabee’s absurd record of unwarranted pardons of dangerous criminals including killers and rapists is just another example proving that the heart of the Republican Party is now in the hands of religious extremists.