I think they are both generally ok, but also somewhat sketchy. I don't see them as much different from Clinton's pardons, Fords or Andrew Johnson's Christmas day pardons for confederate soldiers.
People in the conservative ecosystem are very much up in arms about the pardon of Hunter Biden.
Like most things in MAGAland, these matters are framed in a certain way, and all nuance is eliminated. The irony of being upset about Biden while being a cheerleader for Don Jr is lost.
I think you totally proved my point. Both conservatives and liberals will almost always look at pardons by a president from their own party much differently than those by a president from the other party.
I don’t think so. I was pretty much raised in a family that was staunch Democrats and in a few cases even party officials at the local level.
I was pretty young and not really caring, but I recall them being unhappy about Clinton’s last minute pardons as they were obviously compromised. I recall conversations about the Gerald Ford pardon of Nixon that happened around the context of Scooter Libby and there was an acceptance that that was more of the grist of politics than anything.
I don’t recall any president in my memory proposing pardons in advance to people blatantly breaking the law. When I was younger, republicans were almost solemnly committed to the “rule of law”. That changed in the last 20 years. This president is very tellingly an admirer of Andrew Jackson, who was in most measurement a disaster, as is this admin.
Personally, I live my life fairly “conservatively”, but have more progressive politics with some “exceptions” for the modern sense of the word. I respect those who disagree with my point of view, but am not tolerant of disdain for the law, basic fairness and society.
