MAYBE REPUBLICANS SHOULDN'T DEFEND TRUMP OR ATTACK HIM

Donald Trump has been indicted, and many of his rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination feel compelled to defend him, or at least to attack the prosecutor:

Shortly after the news dropped, Nikki Haley, who is running against Trump, tweeted a clip of her slamming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

“This is more about revenge than it is about justice,” she wailed on Fox News.

For his part, Vivek Ramaswamy ... lashed out at the indictment, calling it “a national disaster” and “a dark day.”

Meanwhile, over at CNN, Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, who has been floated as a presidential candidate, denounced the indictment as “a disservice to the country” and a “political prosecution.”

... And former Secretary of Statement Mike Pompeo accused Bragg of “undermining America’s confidence in our legal system.”

Even Jeb Bush, who's not running for anything but may or may not be a Ron DeSantis surrogate, attacked the prosecutor on behalf of Trump, even though Trump hates Jeb and his entire family.

Bragg’s predecessor didn’t take up the case. The Justice Department didn’t take up the case. Bragg first said he would not take up the case. This is very political, not a matter of justice. In this case, let the jury be the voters.

— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) April 1, 2023

Why are they doing this? A couple of presidential wannabes had the sense not to:

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has been the most outspoken possible contender in criticizing Mr. Trump, said nothing. Neither did Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Scott and Christie are right. Why give Trump the oxygen? If you're running against Trump or thinking about it, the only people who might potentially vote for you, by definition, are people who are willing to look past Trump's name on the ballot to vote for someone else. They might like Trump, but they don't worship him as a god. So if you're trying to impress them, why treat him with such deference?

I don't think Haley, Pence, Pompeo and the others are merely deferring to Trump. I think the instinct on the right is to take advantage of every possible opportunity to bash the libs, which has been the main occupation of Republicans since at least the days of Newt Gingrich. Republicans pursue opportunities to bash libs the way sharks pursue food -- they do it all day, every day. They never stop. But the ones who don't want Trump to be the 2024 nominee really should refrain for once.

Then there's Ron DeSantis, who attacked Trump and then expressed support:

Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida took a measured dig at Donald J. Trump by publicly mocking the circumstances that led New York investigators to the former president.

“I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair,” Mr. DeSantis said.

But as soon as Mr. Trump was indicted this week, Mr. DeSantis promptly vowed to block his state from assisting a potential extradition. In a show of support for his fellow Republican, Mr. DeSantis called the case “the weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda.”

DeSantis allowed the Trump campaign to goad him into commenting on the case, and that's when he attacked Trump (while also saying "Soros" a lot in remarks about Bragg). But both the criticism of Trump and the criticism of the prosecution had the effect of focusing Republican voters' attention on Trump. And now look where we are: In a new Yahoo-Ipsos poll, Trump leads DeSantis 57%-31% head to head and 52%-21% in a ten-candidate field.

Does that mean the race is over? Not necessarily. Remember the immediate aftermath of the midterms, when DeSantis was surging and Trump was slipping? That could happen again. One indictment, especially in a case involving sex, is leading to a rally-'round effect. Two or three indictments might lead some of today's Trump supporters to have second thoughts.

Trump could be beaten in the primaries by someone who's built his or her own lib-owning road, and who's done it with panache. DeSantis has been good at the former (which is why he's Trump's top challenger by far), but he hasn't been good at the latter. He needs to seem less constipated, but also more personally aggrieved. I told you the approach DeSantis should take if he's going to talk about Trump: They came for him, they're coming for me, they're coming for all of us, and I won't let them come for you. If you're going to talk about Trump, pivot to yourself, and pivot to how much you understand the suffering of True Patriots under the iron yoke of liberalism and wokeness.

The conventional wisdom is that DeSantis needs to attack Trump in order to beat him. Here's Jamelle Bouie:

DeSantis has to find an avenue of attack on the former president and actually take the shot, knowing that he could alienate legions of Republican voters in the process. He has to somehow persuade Trump supporters that he could do a better job — more effective and less chaotic — without disparaging Trump to the point where he, DeSantis, is no longer viable. And he has to do all of this before Trump can build steam and roll over him like he did his rivals in the 2016 Republican primary.

I don't think DeSantis should praise Trump or attack him. He needs to stir GOP voters' emotions (which mostly have to do with grievance). He isn't doing that. He needs to make the case that he's a top-tier lib-owner. He's doing that, primarily by owning the libs in areas of the culture Trump has ignored (trans rights, CRT, vaccine skepticism). He should keep doing that.

The best comparison here is to Fox News. After the 2020 election, Fox lost voters because it had placed itself on the "Biden legitimately won" side of what had become a culture war. Fox tried to join the other side by showcasing election denialism, but the ratings didn't recover until 2021, when Fox began to focus on CRT, trans rights, and other issues that weren't associated with Trump.

Fox has to rally around Trump now, but DeSantis and the other presidential wannabes don't. They should ignore Trump's bombast and concentrate on showing that they're better lib-owners than Trump. In all likelihood, only DeSantis can pull this off, and maybe he'll always be too boring to do it with any style. But seeming like a new hero will be more effective than trying to topple the old hero.