The Republican YouTube Debate: Jesus and the Death Penalty

watch him squirm

The question was simply, 'Regarding the Death Penalty, what would Jesus do?'

Huckabee answered the question by arguing his position on the death penalty in general. He dragged out the old dead dog of deterrence, long refuted. To cover his pro-death bases, he also made the age old claim that some problems are “beyond any other capacity for us fix”. His claim is that since we cannot “fix” the problem we should kill the person.

Aside from his vague notion of “fixing” people, and our current prison system’s incapacity and unwillingness to do so, Mike Huckabee is making a classic logical error called, false dilemma. This happens when, during an argument, one explains that a circumstance must resolve in one of only two ways. A fallacy exists if there are other, unmentioned, ways the circumstance could resolve. With the debate, Huckabee set up the false dilemma that we have to “fix” terrible criminals or kill them. If there are any other possibilities his argument falls apart. So why not lock up terrible criminals we can't reform forever? Whether or not you agree that it’s a good option, at least grant that it’s an option. Huckabee’s fallacious point undermines the logic of his argument. Which, if we remember, was designed to dodge the question about what Jesus thinks about capital punishment.

When Anderson Cooper pressed him, Huckabee used his keen sense of humor to deflect the question, “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office”.

Tom Tancredo was next up, his dodge was much less graceful and genuine. He just said that he’d pray to god when he had to kill someone, and that he supported the death penalty. No talk of what Jesus would do, or any justification of his beliefs.