Views on the Arpaio pardon are popping up. Perry Bacon, Jr. on FiveThirtyEight:
The trio of major announcements made by President Trump’s administration on Friday night — the departure of national security aide Sebastian Gorka, the pardon of former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the release of a formal memo from the president ordering the Pentagon not to accept transgender people as new recruits in the armed forces — illustrate two important things about the president’s governing style.
First, one of the defining features of the Trump administration is that he embraces a kind of conservative identity politics, in which he promotes policies supported by groups that he favors and that may have felt marginalized during Barack Obama’s presidency. The second is that Trump’s support for those policies is not contingent on the presence of ousted aides like Gorka and Steve Bannon, who agree with him on these positions.
Yep. Harry Enten, also on FiveThirtyEight:
Of course, Trump’s, or really any president’s, biggest fear is that voters will punish him for a pardon like voters did Gerald Ford for his pardon of ex-president Richard Nixon. Ford’s job approval rating plummeted overnightand never really recovered. Trump’s pardon of Arpaio is unlikely to be nearly so toxic, however, given that Ford took over for Nixon and Nixon was involved in a major coverup as president.
Still, the numbers show that a high-profile pardon such as Trump’s of Arpaio is rarely good for a president’s popularity, which may be why recent presidents have tended to grant more pardons as they approach the end of their second terms. And while the major hurricane wreaking havoc in Texas may distract voters from this move for the time being, in the longer term, an unpopular Trump making an unpopular pardon probably isn’t good politics.
And a pardon from a deeply unpopular and incompetent President may rebound on the recipient as well. However, Arpaio has always affected a disinterest to his own reputation, so this probably doesn’t bother him. Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer on Lawfare:
Trump went ahead with the pardon, and the reasons having nothing to do with injustice, or the public welfare, can explain it. He has political problems with his right flank—with the Steve Bannons and the Sebastian Gorkas who are loudly protesting the ascendancy in the White House of Republicans lacking their revolutionary vision. The President made clear in his theatrical preview of the pardon at the Phoenix rally that the Arpaio pardon works well as a gesture to this political constituency—a reaffirmation that he remains the candidate they voted for who will keep what Gorka, in his resignation letter Friday, called the “MAGA promise.” Trump asked the Phoenix crowd if they liked Sheriff Joe, and they roared back their approval. Now he has delivered.
It all seems to come down to that: Trump disrupted the operation of the criminal justice process to score a political point, and he believes that the “complete power to pardon” gives him all the space he needs for this maneuver and requires of him only the most pro forma, meaningless explanation of his action. He has managed, however, to make a very clear statement about the “rule of law” in his government, and he has miscalculated if he somewhat imagines that it will not come back to haunt him.
Short term gain at the expense of long term strategy. No comment on National Review, but it’s the weekend. Susan Wright on RedState is mixing Arpaio, Senator McCain, and McCain’t failed primary challenger, Kelli Ward, in a cocktail glass with a swizzle stick:
Then, of course, there are the Trump clingers, hoping that agreeing with everything Trump says and does will ingratiate them to Trump’s fans and they can be dragged along the tracks behind the Trump train.
Flake’s challenger for his seat, Dr. Kelli Ward, quickly chimed in:
“We applaud the president for exercising his pardon authority to counter the assault on Sheriff Arpaio’s heroic efforts to enforce the nation’s immigrant laws,” Ward said in a statement.
There’s enforcing laws, and there’s singling out brown people. It’s a fine line that Arpaio was found to have happily crossed.
Then again, Ward is the InfoWars hopping, chemtrail queen, who couldn’t even beat John McCain in 2016. She felt her time had come when Senator McCain’s brain cancer was announced, and she went on radio and tried to rush the man to an early grave, saying she hoped she could get his seat.
Classy.
She’s determined she’s going to get one of those U.S. Senate seats, one way or another.
And this protection of loyalists, while he demonizes the press, other Republicans, and even our nation’s intelligence community is how autocratic rule takes hold.
Trump may be a wannabe autocrat, but it takes a nation ready to be ruled by an autocrat, and the Charlottesville incident is the mark of a nation violently uninterested in a Comrade Trump, and the poll I cited earlier in this thread reinforces that assessment. Kevin Drum:
With this action, Trump is basically saying that courts have no authority to enforce the law on agents of the state. I wonder if it will be challenged in court? Everyone always says the pardon power is absolute, but I don’t think that’s ever been tested. After all, the language of the First Amendment is also absolute, but the Supreme Court has carved out all kinds of exceptions. (But who would have standing to sue?)
Here’s a novel thought: the judge who issued the order to Arpaio telling him to stop profiling. Or the jury who convicted Arpaio. Of course, SCOTUS wouldn’t agree to Kevin’s suggestion.
