Ingraham and Shapiro have both plumped for Ron DeSantis, and Hochman left a job at National Review to work for him (before being forced out after making fascistic, white supremacist memes for the campaign’s social media accounts). You might think they would depict Trump’s legal jeopardy as, if not fair punishment for his crimes, then at least a political vulnerability. It’s too bad prosecutors keep targeting Trump, but maybe the party should nominate a non-incarcerated candidate for president seems like an obvious case to make for DeSantis.

Instead, they are insisting all Republicans — or at least all Republicans who pose a real threat to the left — are equally vulnerable to prosecution. They are throwing away a strong rationale, perhaps the only remaining viable one, to nominate the candidate they prefer. Why?

The answer is that Republicans are genuinely obsessed with the potential for using the criminal-justice system as a political weapon. They are so obsessed they don’t even wish to imagine leaving behind a world in which prosecution is linked with political identity. “Victory or prison” is the political environment they affirmatively wish to inhabit. Trump’s predicament hands them permission to do what they have always craved. And now the campaign, which will be anchored around a series of criminal trials, will be framed around their desire not only to keep Trump out of prison, but to lock up as many of their political opponents as they can.