…. Hutchinson wasn’t alone in calling for the rigged, obviously corrupt trial and Soviet-style conviction to be “respected.” The former GOP governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, who is now running for U.S. Senate, encouraged people “to respect the verdict and legal process” and invoked the “rule of law” — a curious thing to say given how the entire trial made a mockery of the rule of law.

[….]

Put bluntly, Republicans have to make Democrats play by their own rules. They have to inflict pain ruthlessly on Democrats with endless show trials and lawfare, just as Democrats have done to Trump. The leftist radicals who run the Democrat Party only understand power, and they will only stop when they are force-fed their own medicine over and over. 

What does that messaging look like? It looks like Anthony Sabatini, a Florida Republican who said Thursday he’s running for Congress “to imprison as many Democrats as possible.”

As my Federalist colleague Sean Davis said Thursday, “If you’re a Republican running for office, you can just go ahead and throw away all of your elegant little policy proposals for this or that corporate exclusion or tax subsidy. Give me a list of which Democrat officials you’re going to put in prison, or get lost.”

What does that look like in practice? Here’s one idea. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton should immediately indict President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland for the ongoing crisis at the border, which in every way is a criminal human-trafficking conspiracy that they have orchestrated and sustained by flouting federal immigration law.

[….]

If the Republican Party is going to be anything other than controlled opposition for the Democrats, fiddling while the republic burns, it needs to purge its ranks of snakes like McConnell and elevate those who aren’t afraid of playing by Democrats’ rules. A good way to separate the two groups would be to start asking Republican officeholders and candidates whether they’d be willing to bring criminal charges against high-ranking Democrats and, if they can, imprison them.

That’s the world Democrats have called into being with this show trial. They are the ones who have cried “no quarter” in this fight. The least Republicans can do at this point is accept their terms and enter the fight on equal footing.

Why is that so important? For two reasons. The first, mentioned above, is that Democrats will never stop unless they are made to suffer exactly what they would inflict on Republicans. If we’re going to start jailing political opponents in America, then it has to go both ways. The other reason is now that Democrats have done this, have made a mockery of our justice system, the only way to restore faith in the rule of law is to make those responsible pay for what they’ve done and bring them to justice. If Democrats get away with this, Americans will be justified in thinking the entire system is illegitimate.

So Republican officials have a choice to make. They can do what’s necessary to stop Democrats and restore faith in our justice system, or they can become Democrat slaves and let the republic burn.