The probably with an “independent DOJ” is that it’s sort of counter-intuitive at first glance. The same people who think voter ID is a very reasonable concept probably also think “The AG works for the President so of course he has to do what Trump tells him. What’s the problem?” Moreover, they probably consider getting the DOJ to go after your enemies as one of the perks of being president. “Sure, it’s sort of corrupt, but everybody does it! Just get over it.”
Plus “Dems are even worse. Kennedy’s AG was his own brother! Checkmate!”
I think this is mostly right, but I think it’s more than that. Tribalism leads them to believe that everyone does it, so the difference in right and wrong is whether you are the right people doing it for the right reasons.
It’s like when the lady in documentary Jesus Camp says
It’s no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have… excuse me, but we have the truth!
Yes, the unsolicited memo he wrote arguing Trump is basically above the law set off all kinds of alarm bells. Sessions was actually a federal prosecutor and had some sense of the bounds in which the DOJ operates. Barr was always a pro-executive extremist* (“If the president does it, it’s not a crime”), though the degree to which he’s let his freak flag fly is fairly stunning. I knew he’d be a hack, but did not realize he’d be all in.
The media is socially liberal. People tend to use social issues as a litmus test for whether someone is a liberal or not. I’d be happy to trade the media being more liberal on economic issues in exchange for them being less liberal on social issues.