If Mike Huckabee aspired to be the next president of the United States, he always faced an uphill climb; it’s tough to see what advantage he would have had this time that wasn’t in play in 2008, where he was the fresh face, surprise winner of the Iowa caucus, etc.

As Ed Morrissey noted, Huckabee commuted the lengthy sentence of Maurice Clemmons in 2000, “despite a lifetime pattern of violent crime and erratic behavior, nine years before Clemmons shot four police officers to death in a coffee shop.” Joe Carter, probably the best part of Huckabee’s presidential campaign, notes that the candidate really saw this issue differently from almost everyone else in the political world, for better or worse: “The governor seemed genuinely surprised that he was held responsible for the criminal acts committed by those whose sentences he had commuted as governor. It was as if he believed that simply having noble intentions and a willingness to make tough decisions would provide political cover.”

Carter notes, accuately, that “the politically prudent tactic would have been to simply refuse to grant any leniency—ever. Other governors with their sights set on higher offices had learned that doing nothing—even to correct obvious instances of injustice—was unlikely to cause any long-term political damage. Keeping an innocent man in prison is less harmful to an ambitious politician than freeing someone who may commit other crimes.”

Lots of Americans make mistakes, and lots of Americans make bad decisions and commit acts they’re not proud of; forgiveness and compassion are not alien concepts to them. But not many Americans commit violent crimes, and they have a hard time imagining a good reason to let a violent criminal out of prison before the sentence is completed.

But two decisions by Huckabee since the shooting have effectively crushed what chance he had at the 2012 nomination. When Clemmons murdered four policemen, there wasn’t much to say; while obviously Huckabee had no idea that Clemmons was so dangerous, Huckabee’s hand in putting him back on the street represented an awful lapse in judgment.

Huckabee’s initial statement, declaring, “should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State” seemed to be deflecting his share of the blame. The criminal justice system in Arkansas, for example, was going to keep Clemmons behind bars until the year 2098 until Huckabee stepped in.

Today Huckabee went on Joe Scarborough’s radio show, and finally used strong language – not to criticize his earlier decision, but to denounce critics of the decision as “disgusting” and lamenting “how sick our society has become that people are more concerned about a campaign three years from now than those grieving families in Washington.”

It takes a particular bravado for a man in Huckabee’s circumstances to contend that his critics are the ones who should hang their heads in shame; some people might find letting violent criminals go free early out of a misguided sense that they’ve changed their ways a clearer reflection of a sick society.