Same could have been said if we had actually nailed Ronnie Raygun to the wall for Iran/Contra. Instead, we let him coast. And that was even worse than Watergate.

Republicans have been skating for years and years for their crimes.

Ford pardoned Nixon, so there wasn’t much that could be done to punish Nixon after that. They couldn’t even go after him at the state level since the Watergate scandal happened in DC. Pardoning Nixon was a major part of why Ford didn’t get reelected, although there were several other major reasons for that.