The country very quickly got over Nixon the person once he and any expected but now not forthcoming trials were out of the public eye. That is the lesson of history.
Getting the US over trump the person would be a very wonderful thing. I agree with you that a Haley pardon would not accomplish that. But to assert that it’s ahistorical that a pardon can (not must) produce “closure” is factually wrong.
Bingo. Once Nixon resigned, left office, and was pardoned, he quietly retired to his home in California and was rarely in the news again.
That, as we all know, will not happen with Trump.
There is a point in the Nikki Haley Civil War Answer Debacle that I’m not hearing anybody making. Lots of commentators observe that she’s trying to not offend anybody by mentioning slavery. Shame on her. But the unvoiced point is that, taking her answer at face value, she goes beyond that cowardice and, if you parse her words and positioning, she actually voices a specifically pro-slavery position. Here are the statements of the substance of her argument:
“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do“
“Government doesn’t have to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.”
“freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way”
In other words, there was a bad side, in which the government tells you what you can’t do, and a good side in which they don’t. But the thing the government was telling somebody they couldn’t do was enslaving others, and in her words “people” means white people including white slavers. She’s for government that won’t interfere in your life by trying to tell you you shouldn’t enslave people (and the “you” she’s speaking to is white). I can’t think of anything else the government was interfering by telling people what to do in the run up to the Civil War. It’s another version of “The Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about States’ Rights. But, yeah, States’ Rights was about slavery.”
Yes, she totally tried to whitewash the confederate side of it.
(It was quite something listening to DeSantis criticize her terrible response, because he was jumping through hoops to avoid saying “slavery”. Which he ended up not saying at all.)
Several folks have. Here’s an example:
Whoops – pardon me LSLGuy, I must not have been paying attention! Thanks for cleaning me up!
Wet cleanup in aisle 4??
I presume she wants to first get the nomination, then checking polls and focus groups to see which of her views need to be walked back.
There is a political price to be paid for flip-flopping, but it can be exaggerated. If she let Trump stay in prison for a year and then commuted sentences, she probably could get away with claiming she basically honored her promise.
Or if he was convicted in state court, she could say those punishments were sufficient. Ford’s problem was because he totally let Nixon get away with it. President Haley would not have that power.
As much as that might be a nice thing, that’s not the point. Nixon’s pardon created the mindset of “we can commit the most heinous offenses against the Constitution and never worry about going to jail.” See: Iran-Contra.
It’s not merely about sending tRump to prison, or to Coventry, or other permanent exile (as much as I want to see that). It’s about making sure nothing even remotely like this ever happens again, by making the potential price too high.
If Nikki Haley touts a pardon for tRump as one of her potential first acts as President, we need to hammer home to the electorate her disregard for the rule of law, 24/7, from now till November 2024.
I agree in general with both specific and general deterrence as features of both law and politics.
The challenge is that for the most aggressive of psychopaths, they simply will not be deterred. Imprisoning trump in silent disgrace for the rest of his life (much as I’d love to see that on live TV) would not do much to stop the next guy who’s convinced he’s going to overcome the obstacles and become Supreme Leader.
Agree with this.
Although Fox et al has been hammering for a decade or more that the laws of this country have been corrupted by those Evil leftists, and all true Patriots know that abiding by all law is wrong; it’s only abiding by right law that’s right.
So first the Ds need to get any R to even hear / see their words. A tall order in media bubble-world. Then we need to persuade them that we’re not lying as they’ve been told. And finally persuade them to abandon the contrary verities they’ve been trained on and embrace our version of the truth instead.
We gotta try, but it’s gonna be an uphill fight.
Is anyone still using St. Helena?
I don’t think he even has a home in California.
I was thinking Alcatraz, but hey…
A tourist destination??
Well, as long as we have to keep him there, why not make a little money off it?
“All right, folks, now the star attraction at Alcatraz: the former president and convicted traitor of the United States of America, Donald J. tRump – now, don’t get to0 close! In spite of the medical precautions, it’s just possible you might catch something!”
Okay, we’re getting off-topic. Let’s stop the hijack before the mod wakes up.
Actually, pretty much, yes. LOL We live blissfully close to a testing center so I took the morning off work to drive her up (she doesn’t drive). They called her name within 10 minutes of arriving. She went in, I played solitaire on my phone for 45 minutes, maybe an hour, then she came back out wearing a big happy grin.
Turns out they were also doing the swearing-in ceremony at the same time; the longest part of the process was taking the photo for her citizenship docs!
I didn’t even need to take the whole morning off!
I am genuinely saddened by how few Republicans have anything resembling a spine, one vertebra of which is respect for the truth.
Haley is just another pile of right-wing trash, standing for nothing.
I will point out that when they do, they get run out of office and death threats. So, it’s not just a matter of standing up for what it right. That takes some cojones.
Yeah, the party has eaten itself alive. Its truly one of the great political tragedies in human history. Disgraceful.
I wish her people would STOP txting me. ATT has a nice spam blocker but still, it’s a pain. They block the number but her people use different numbers.