No sooner had Johnny Depp won his defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard than high-powered Republicans raced to embrace the actor and herald the end of the #MeToo movement. They may come to rue the day.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, totaling 19 representatives, celebrated the verdict, though Ms. Heard was also awarded $2 million to her former husband’s $15 million for defamation.

Other House Republicans — Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado — followed suit, hoisting the Jolly Roger with no thought to the consequences. 

It’s odd that conservatives would join Mr. Depp’s crew, but having grown accustomed to electing dogs that don’t bark, they pine for seats at the popular kids’ table. Mr. Depp — both a fighter and famous — offered them a twofer.

Yet no Republican has ever cast a ballot for him, and by all accounts he’d rather walk the plank than be one of them. “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” he asked during the Trump presidency.

“[I]t’s been awhile,” he said to cheers, invoking John Wilkes Booth assassinating President Lincoln, “and maybe it’s time.” What savvy political organization would embrace someone who says such things? 

Speaking of Lincoln, frustration with leadership characterized his search for competent military leadership in the Civil War. General George B. McClellan, who ran against Lincoln as a Democrat, could be a mascot for modern Republican squishes. 

“Little Mac” laid complex plans worthy of the Sun’s own Rube Goldberg but never executed any of them, to the point that President Lincoln wrote, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”

Ever since that first president, Republicans have sought fighters. They yearn not just to be on the winning team, but the popular one, as witnessed by how many in the establishment rejected President Reagan because the left just didn’t think he met the Fonzi test for coolness. 

With the left dominant in pop culture, this has led Republicans to seek out those with high profiles who will validate their beliefs. In President Trump, they found both — a celebrity and a brawler — which explains his enduring appeal. 

This search for validation was common during my decades working for Rush Limbaugh, with callers praising this or that prominent figure who they believed had become “one of us” based on some offhand remark. 

Limbaugh would caution them against seeing what they wanted to see. In this case, Mr. Depp may have been the wronged party, but that doesn’t mean he’s the proverbial liberal who gets mugged and becomes a conservative. 

As for #MeToo, it was indeed weaponized against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, but let’s not forget it bagged President Clinton and other high-profile Democrats without landing conservatives.

Democrats Al Franken, senator of Minnesota, and Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, resigned. Leftist broadcasters, including Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer, and a Democrat mega-donor, Harvey Weinstein, were also exposed. 

By making common cause with Mr. Depp against #MeToo, the right plays into the left’s narrative, which is that the hashtag applies solely to the GOP because no Democrat would ever so much as sniff a hair on a woman’s head. 

President Biden, of course, did all that and more, if we’re to believe the memory-holed allegations of sexual assault by Tara Reade, an aide to Mr. Biden who claims he sexually assaulted her. 

House Judiciary Republicans could have used the Depp-Heard verdict to breathe new life into Ms. Reade’s cries for justice. Instead, they tweeted out a gif of Mr. Depp’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” character, Jack Sparrow, standing triumphant. 

The tweet “went viral,” which is the social media equivalent of that validation Republicans crave the way Cookie Monster craves snickerdoodles. Yet it will not garner a single vote or change a single mind.

Besides, now that the GOP members have shackled themselves to an actor who is hostile to everything they stand for, they’ll have to answer for it if he so much as quotes the misogynist pirate Yellowbeard in the future.

The Depp-Heard trial showcased two pampered Hollywood liberals. Neither won a clean victory, but Republicans may find themselves the biggest losers — all because they couldn’t resist a few cheap retweets and a chance to appear cool.