Despite the best efforts of the majority of the mainstream media to spin the situation, it appears that the word is slowly getting out about the Department of Justice’s shameful sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden. And a solid majority of voters are not happy about the situation at all according to a new poll from Rasmussen Reports. More than half (55%) disapprove of the plea deal, with a substantial plurality (41%) disapproving “strongly.” In contrast, 37% approve of the plan, with less than one in five “strongly” approving. How that number isn’t even lower remains a mystery to me.

A majority of voters disapprove of a plea bargain that kept Hunter Biden out of federal prison, and suspect favoritism for President Joe Biden’s son.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters disapprove of the deal in which Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty on charges that he violated federal tax and gun laws, including 41% who Strongly Disapprove. Thirty-seven percent (37%) approve of the plea bargain, including 19% who Strongly Approve.

Looking at the specific questions posed in this survey, Rasmussen didn’t pull any punches or sugarcoat the topic. They explained the general nature of the charges and the fact that Hunter would serve no prison time as a result. They also asked if voters believed that he “received favorable treatment because his father is the President.”

The final question really cut to the core of the ongoing debate over this situation:

Do you agree or disagree with this question: “[There is a] two-tier system in America. If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. But if you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal”?

Ouch. But I am once again frankly shocked that the number of people willing to admit that there is obviously a two-tier system of justice inside the federal government isn’t far higher. There are clearly a small but still significant number of people who don’t seem to realize that if the other party sweeps into power and replaces everyone at the FBI and the DOJ with people who are equally partisan in the other direction, the weaponization of the federal government could just as easily be turned against them.

That blindness to reality does seem to be a clear match with the numbers we consistently see in Joe Biden’s approval ratings. Roughly the same one in five voters are still willing to say that they “strongly” approve of Biden’s performance, even on the economy, despite the fact that they must be aware of the effects of persistent inflation, not to mention rising crime rates and all the rest of the crises currently unfolding across the country.

Imagine, for a moment, that we reached the three-year mark of an upcoming Republican administration where prices and crime were down. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to suspect that the same 19 or 20 percent would “strongly” disapprove of the results. And that illustrates the trap that awaits the GOP even if they are broadly successful in 2024.

Even if Donald Trump or some other Republican comes into the Oval Office and totally “cleans house” at the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS, and the rest of the weaponized aspects of the federal government, they will get no credit for it from partisan leftists. If the law is applied equally to all without partisan favor, leftists won’t be overly upset about it because that’s how it was always supposed to be. They would be faced with a choice between equal treatment or favorable treatment. That’s really not a tough call to make if you put yourself in their shoes.

Meanwhile, conservatives are faced with three choices. They can be blatantly persecuted under a leftist administration, receive equal justice under conservative rule, or give the other side “a taste of their own medicine.” If the eventual Republican president succumbs to the temptation to follow the third option, we’ll still be in a new banana republic. It will just be working against “the other side” until the balance of power inevitably shifts yet again. We shouldn’t just be fighting for victory. We should be fighting for and insisting on actual justice, which we are currently lacking.