We all know that Republican politics now is largely a matter of keeping your friends close and your enemies out of office at whatever cost. In Texas, even the pretense of having principles is wearing thin. But the way some elected officials have responded to Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts—resulting from a bungled cover-up of his extramarital affair with an adult film star—is nothing short of remarkable. Nearly every prominent GOP official in the state has come to the defense of Stormy Daniels’ (alleged) paramour. More than that, some are vowing vengeance.

Eight years ago, virtually the entire Republican establishment here—save for a few supporters of Rick Perry and Jeb Bush—were in lockstep behind Senator Ted Cruz. As right wing as they come, Cruz pitched himself as a good citizen, a godly man, a man who lived his life right, toiled hard and saved up cans of soup. His dad was a pastor and a refugee from communist Cuba. Ted vowed to bring Christly rule back to Washington.

Then, one by one, most Republican leaders conceded to the reality that their voters didn’t care about any of that. They didn’t want a good man; they could live with a bad man. They could tolerate a crook, a lecher, a lout, a cretin. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who used to brand himself as a “Christian first, a conservative second, and a Republican third,” had the most dramatic road-to-Damascus moment. One week he was appearing behind Sad Ted at another depressing concession speech in a primary state and the next he had fully embraced the hegemony of Trump’s “New York values.” As that realization sunk in, Patrick and his cohort cast aside their old fixation on morality. They began defending the indefensible over and over again and became inversions of their former selves.

The felony charges in New York concern business records and the falsification of documents—in other words, it’s a trial about paperwork. That gives the former president’s supporters plenty of room to dismiss its importance. But why was Trump falsifying business records? To hide a hush money payment of $130,000 to an adult film star named Stormy Daniels in an attempt to keep Trump’s skeletons in his closet in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. The chief witness in the case was Trump’s own longtime personal attorney. Imagine if Beto O’Rourke had done this: Patrick would still be talking about it every day.

No prominent Texas Republican can defend this on the merits, but they’ve found ways to deny it. Patrick’s statement released minutes after the verdict argued that the trial was an “absolute travesty of our judicial system” and that the “prosecution’s star witness was a convicted liar and an admitted thief.” (He’s referring to Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen—and if Cohen is a liar and a thief, what does it say that he was Trump’s right-hand man for so long?)

During a podcast taping at the Republican convention last week, Patrick, who attended the trial in person, even dinged the shameless New Yorkers for the appearance of the courthouse Trump was subjected to. “You could have cleaned the place up a little bit,” he said, to show “a little respect.” Patrick and his podcast host noted how ridiculous it was that the jurors were allowed to go home at night, where they’d face public pressure—which is rich, given that Patrick, as the judge of Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial last summer, surely influenced his senator–jurors when he accepted $3 million from the attorney general’s supporters.

In his statement, Patrick said the persecution of the Donald “should frighten every American,” sending a chill through every patriotic heart. “If the justice system can do this to a former president, it can do it to anyone in America.” You see versions of this line over and over. The state GOP put it in starker terms: “Everything they are doing to President Trump, they will do to you next.”

Yes, the frightening lesson of the Trump trial is: If you have an affair with an adult film star in Lake Tahoe that you don’t want your wife or the voters to find out about, and you engage in a complex pay-for-silence agreement that involves a controversial tabloid newspaper, and you wrongly account for the payment by recording it as legal fees paid by your trust registered in New York State, you may face prosecution. It’s a warning that should chill every American to the core.

More seriously, the message seems to be: If this very powerful man could be convicted of a crime, you could too. And . . . so?

Texas’s Republican leaders want Republican voters to think the trial was entirely manufactured by Trump’s enemies. Governor Greg Abbott—who Trump has said is on his list of prospective vice presidential candidates—called it a “sham show trial” and a “kangaroo court,” while Cruz said it constituted “political persecution.” Patrick argued it indicated “a third-world-styled justice system that goes after political opponents like you see in Russia or North Korea.” Several, notably Abbott, blamed the Biden administration when they could simply have blamed a blue state legal system. Biden could have no direct involvement in the case, if for no other reason than it’s a trial in state court. In their statements, none grappled with the underlying events of the case.

A YouGov snap poll conducted after Trump was convicted showed 50 percent approval for the verdict—a bare majority. The problem for Republican leaders, potentially, is that just 30 percent disapprove (64 percent of Republican respondents, meanwhile, said they believe Trump isn’t guilty). Many Americans appear to have learned the lesson that Donald Trump is a pretty shady dude and just might deserve what he got in court. Another poll of Trump supporters says just 6 percent would support Trump less after a conviction. But in what looks to be a very close election, that’s not insignificant.

Republican leaders in Texas have to move quickly and forcefully to try to win back some of those folks or they may pay a price for it in November. As they do, there may be collateral damage. Part of their message is to argue that a New York prosecution has irrevocably cheapened the justice system. (Ironically, Abbott and friends are accusing New York of politicizing the justice system the same month that the governor pardoned a racist murderer for shooting a left-wing protester in Austin.)

The reply, from Abbott and his cronies, is to attempt to demean the justice system further. The conservative legal theorist John Yoo, who famously paved the way for the George W. Bush administration’s torture programs, argued in the National Review this week that Republicans should “respond in kind” by prosecuting Democrats for partisan reasons, and advised Republican district attorneys to remember “the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you.” (That’s a perversion of a line from Sermon on the Mount, of course, which actually advises to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”)

Ken Paxton is picking up the torch. “As Attorney General of Texas, I will unleash every tool at my disposal to fight this blatant corruption and political persecution spewing from New York and the Biden administration,” he said on X, minutes after the verdict was read. This was, he said, a “battle of good versus evil,” and “we will fight back harder than ever for the values and freedoms that define our nation.”

Maybe this is just bluster, but it feels safer to bet that Paxton is going to do something loud and dumb in between now and the election. He may soon acquire even more power, after all. When asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for attorney general in a new administration, Trump said, “I would actually. He’s very, very talented.”