The unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump in New York throws the American legal system into uncharted waters, yet the politics surrounding the case feel eerily familiar: the spotlight is once again shining on Trump for an undesirable reason, and the Republican Party is still sticking by him.

While this indictment might benefit Trump’s political career in the short term, the GOP’s fealty to the former president will further weaken the party in the long term. The results of the last three national elections — which were each a referendum on Trump and his brand of extreme, divisive politics — are proof of the latter.

The former president’s response to the indictment is textbook Trump. He is positioning himself as a martyr and an aggrieved victim of the left-leaning political establishment, and is using his arrest to rally his supporters and raise money.

Since the news broke, Trump has raised over $8 million and nearly doubled his already considerable lead in presidential primary polls. Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who conducts focus groups with Trump voters, found that, for the first time since she began conducting the groups, all participants indicated they would vote for Trump over DeSantis for president. In an interview with Reuters, Longwell cited the indictment as the reason for the shift.

The response to the indictment from elected Republicans has also felt like déjà vu. Faced with the choice to either break from Trump or continue defending him, most chose the latter. Speaker Kevin McCarthy even threatened that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would “hold [Manhattan DA] Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account.”

Admittedly, the legal case being brought against Trump in New York is tenuous. Prosecutors are relying on a novel theory to bring 34 felony charges against the former president for falsifying business records in what even liberal observers are describing as “the hardest to prove” among “all the legal cases facing Trump.”

The circumstances surrounding the indictment also inherently lend credence to the “political witch hunt” narrative perpetuated by Trump’s supporters: a Democratic district attorney in a liberal city, who ran for office on a promise to arrest Trump, brought an indictment based on charges surrounding hush money payments made to an adult film star that were originally leveled six and a half years ago.

In turn, 76% of Americans believe politics played a role in the decision to indict Trump, including a majority (52%) who believed politics played “a major role,” per a CNN poll conducted before the specific charges were unveiled. Yet the same poll found that the majority (60%) of Americans still approve of the decision to indict Trump, including 62% of independents. These conflicting findings ultimately underscore how politically toxic Trump is to the Republican Party’s brand.

What would be even more damaging to Republicans, though, is to continue defending Trump if additional indictments are brought against him.

For one, Trump could soon be indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, based on a recorded phone call where he pressured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”

A special counsel appointed by the Justice Department is also investigating Trump for potential wrongdoing — i.e., for obstructing justice by refusing to turn over classified documents that were uncovered by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago home, as well as for attempting prevent the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the election, including inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.

To be sure, an indictment in any one of these cases, or worse multiple indictments, will further complicate Trump’s already longshot path to winning a second term, should he become the nominee. Additional indictments will keep Trump’s personal corruption at the center of the political debate, which in turn precludes the GOP from advancing an issues-based agenda and allows President Biden to essentially run the same campaign he successfully did in 2020: one based on defeating Donald Trump.

This would be a gift to Biden, who would likely be an underdog against a generic Republican, given his low approval ratings generally and on key issues, such as the economy, immigration and crime.

General election politics clearly indicate that Republicans would be wise to coalesce around a candidate with less baggage than Trump.

Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.