They litter the entire national landscape, but they proliferate the most in red states.

Such as Indiana.

In the Hoosier state, perhaps the most visible Trump mini-me is Attorney General Todd Rokita.

Part of Rokita’s aping of the former president is calculated. The Indiana attorney general, who runs for office as a reflex, figures that his best shot at becoming governor involves courting the Trump crowd.

In a crowded Republican primary, Rokita supposes, that carrying the Trump voters will be enough to win him the nomination.

And, in a state that tilts to the GOP, winning the Republican nomination means winning the general election.

So, there is some method to his madness.

But, like Trump, there also is just madness to his madness.

Anyone who has seen Rokita scurry around in search of national TV time and other forms of attention, like a blind mouse scurrying around in search of cheese, knows that he doesn’t just want the spotlight.

He NEEDS the spotlight.

That’s why he starts fights and thrusts himself into debates that make no sense at all.

And his most recent bit of desperate attention-seeking—his completely unfounded charges against an Indiana doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio rape survivor—may expose him to civil litigation.

What’s more, his actions motivated those opposed to any increased restrictions on abortion to mobilize more rapidly and with even greater fervor. That complicated the task of Rokita’s fellow Republicans not just in crafting abortion legislation during the special session, but also won’t help some of them in the fall general election that’s less than 100 days away.

But that’s the way it is with Trump and his mini-me contingent.

Their hunger for the limelight is so great that they can’t see anything outside its glow.

For that reason, the principles of basic math elude them.

In the seven years he has been an active presence in national politics, Trump never figured out that, however large the crowd before him was, the one he was building across the street in opposition to his posturing was even larger.

Rokita seems to struggle with the same sort of arithmetic dysfunction.

But it’s not fair to single out the Indiana attorney general alone.

Mini-me versions of Trump are as thick in the Hoosier air as mosquitoes on a hot, humid night. They buzz around and think that annoying someone is the same as accomplishing something.

They thrive on social media, posting inanities and memes with about the same regularity as when they take breaths. Some of these inanities and memes are racist or bigoted in other ways. Most of the others have as much connection to reality as a 1970s Saturday morning cartoon.

But that doesn’t matter to the mini-me crowd.

Like their leader and inspiration, telling a tale filled with sound and fury signifying nothing is a good day’s work.

The sad thing is that the ground is littered with them.

Littered is the keyword.