In the classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead,” a space probe returning from Venus blows up and causes corpses to rise from their graves to attack the living.

I got thinking about that movie when I read that Jeb Bush was back in the news last week, begging for someone to run against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries.

The dictionary defines a zombie as “a person or reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature capable of movement but not of rational thought.”

Bush fills the bill. If you doubt that, consider what he said in a recent interview on CNN:

“I think someone should run, just because Republicans ought to be given a choice,” he said.

He also called for Republicans “to have a conversation about what it is to be a conservative.”

Okay, here goes: Is your last name Bush? Then you’re not a conservative.

The members of the Bush family are and always have been the textbook example of political moderates. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But as of the release of the Mueller report, the moderate wing of the Republican Party has been routed.

Not a moment too soon, I say. Like Bush, the moderate Republicans have been so consumed by what’s known as “Trump derangement syndrome” that they can’t think straight.

At the top of the list would be the three pundits who appeared in the New York Post’s “Mueller Madness” chart the other day. This was an NCAA-like chart of 64 critics who got the Russia probe wrong.

Among them were faux-conservatives Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post. Then there was Bill Kristol, late of the failed Weekly Standard.

Like the zombies they are, all three were prepared to dance on the grave of the Trump presidency.

Back in 2016, Kristol went so far as to anoint his own candidate to take Trump’s spot on the ballot after that delegate revolt in Cleveland. You know - the revolt that never happened.

But hope springs eternal. Here how Kristol expressed his hopes for the Russia probe:

“It seems to me likely Mueller will find there was collusion between Trump associates and Putin operatives; that Trump knew about it; and that Trump sought to cover it up and obstruct its investigation.”

At that point, of course, some anti-Trump candidate could have come along to wipe The Donald off the 2020 ballot.

As of last week, the designated Trump opponent being pushed by Jeb Bush was some poor shlub named Larry Hogan.

Never heard of him? You probably never will, unless you live in Maryland. He’s the Republican governor there.

With the release of the Mueller report, the never-Trumpers lost their chance to have a moderate like Hogan take over from the immoderate Trump.

Instead the result energized Trump’s Republican base to the point that only an actual zombie would want to walk into that primary fight.

That means the 2020 GOP convention in Charlotte, N.C., is likely to be a lot more crowded and enthusiastic than the 2016 convention in Cleveland.

A lot of never-Trump Republicans stayed home that year – including Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran unsuccessfully against Trump and then sputtered his way to becoming sorest loser in recent political history.

Some leading Republicans who did show up that year failed to endorse Trump even after he was nominated. Among them was state Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick of Union County.

One prominent Trump supporter, state Sen. Mike Doherty of Warren County, recalled how Bramnick posted himself next to Gov. Christie as he read off the state’s results.

“It was one of the saddest spectacles I’ve ever seen in my life, a guy who spent all his time trashing Trump pressing in to get his face on TV,” said Doherty.

Doherty recalled that there were plenty of other New Jersey Republicans who kept their distance from Trump that year.

“I’d go to Republican events and they wouldn’t have a Trump sign,” he said. “They were still crying about it after he won the nomination.”

Doherty said rank-and-file Republicans in New Jersey are overwhelmingly pro-Trump – but that message hasn’t gotten through to many GOP leaders.

“A lot of these county chairmen are still distancing themselves from Trump,” he said. “They’re just sort of holding their noses and crying. What are you going to do, wait eight years without endorsing your party’s nominee?’

As the old saying goes, that would be a horror show.

But in the end the zombies always lose.