Romney on Huckabee II

Romney launched another negative ad in Iowa this week, where the Republican presidential candidate has been battling the new front-runner, Huckabee. This time, Romney attacks Huckabee's record on methamphetaminelaws and the clemencies he granted as governor of Arkansas. We found that:

Follow your favorite NEWSWEEK columnists

Customize the Newsweek homepage to feature the latest word from your favorite columnists.

The ad says Romney "got tough on drugs like meth" while governor of Massachusetts, but the legislation he supported never passed, and his state's laws are much weaker than Arkansas'. Convicted meth dealers face both minimum and maximum prison terms in Arkansas that are four times longer than those in Massachusetts.

The ad misrepresents news articles, implying that they supported Romney's actions as governor when that's not what the news organizations said. One article, in fact, gave critical views of Romney's refusal to issue a pardon.

Analysis
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced that the ad would begin airing in Iowa Dec. 17. It's a sequel to an earlier Romney attack on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee that we reviewed here, and it begins with the same misleading description of similarities between the two before going on the attack with new material.

Injecting Meth into the Campaign
The ad says Romney "got tough on drugs like meth" while Huckabee "even reduced penalties for manufacturing methamphetamine." But wait: While Romney did submit legislation in 2005 that would have broadened state laws against meth production, such as setting sentencing guidelines for possessing various methamphetamine precursor ingredients, this effort to get "tough" failed. That bill died in committee in Jan. 2007.

The legislation Huckabee supported, meanwhile, did shorten the amount of time a convict would have to serve before being eligible for parole from 70 percent of the sentence to 50 percent. But Arkansas has strict meth laws that remain on the books, and they are far tougher than those in Massachusetts. A convicted meth dealer can be sentenced to 40 years in Arkansas, but in Massachusetts the maximum term is 10 years. The mandatory minimum in Arkansas is 10 years in prison, but it's only a two-and-a-half-year state prison term in Massachusetts. And, in fact, the bill this ad criticizes was drafted with the help of Arkansas state prosecutors to help alleviate overcrowding problems in the state penal system.