EDITORIAL: The danger of the Party of Trump has played out in Congress this week

The long forewarned danger of the Party of Trump has now unfolded in Congress.

Just days after nearly running the nation off the rails again with the threat of yet another government shut-down, a small group of GOP extremists forced chaos on themselves, the House, and all Americans, by ousting their own party’s speaker, Kevin McCarthy.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans have chosen chaos over governing. Every. Time.” Aurora Democratic Congressperson Jason Crow said in a tweet after the House shut down without a speaker. “The Republican civil war is theirs to fix.”

Dangerously, the GOP civil war risks inflicting collateral damage across the nation.

This crisis wasn’t sudden or even new to Washington politics.

For decades now, the threat of right-wing extremists in the Republican Party have created a political system fraught with extortion, anger and fear.

What former GOP Tea Party House Speaker Newt Gingrich began, a new generation of Republican extremists have taken control of.

This latest chapter in the unnerving GOP melodrama ended with McCarthy being cannibalized by the political creatures he helped create and placate.

These extremists are no more “conservatives” in the American historical sense than is the corrupt and deceitful New York GOP Congressperson George Santos.

Extremists like Florida GOP Congressperson Matt Gaetz, Georgia GOP Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Green and Colorado GOP Congressperson Lauren Boebert have now long capitalized on the fear among Republicans extorted by Donald Trump.

Republicans have only themselves to blame for allowing Trump and his henchmen to marshal the party any way they feel with threats of punishing any and all Republican naysayers.

And at the same time, Republicans are the only ones who can reclaim their party, pushing this minority of blackmailing anarchists to the sidelines, where it has existed for generations.

Just a generation ago, it would have been unthinkable that the party known for adhering to rules and defined by limits would allow extremists to take the wheel and steer away from more than 200 years of sound democratic principles and tradition.

Even here in Colorado, a minority of Republican extremists has worked to undermine Colorado’s provenly secure and sound mail-ballot election system. Party extremists just last week worked to undermine the will of statewide voters allowing for a new generation of fairness in deciding party nominees, which in many parts of the state automatically become election victors.

But now, these extremists have brought Congress to a halt, at a time of great peril for the nation, and the world.

Russia hasn’t presented itself as the threat to the United States and the world in the way it does now since the 1960s. Undermining support to Ukraine at this time only makes the threat of Russia more dangerous.

After avoiding a government shut-down this week by mere minutes, the House is now on a rudderless high-speed train to November, facing the same fiscal crisis it did when there was a speaker in the lower chamber.

Instead, House Republicans are mired in a political snipe hunt for President Joe Biden, with zero evidence for cause.

This is a political party kowtowed by extremists consumed by false flags, false motives and false information.

Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters alike should message their GOP elected officials in Colorado and across the nation and demand they turn away from extremism and extremists, and especially their toxic and ruinous allegiance and fear of Donald Trump.

While Republicans have hurled themselves this week into a chasm of chaos, it could be an opportunity to leave the root of their dismay and pending disaster in the abyss, and reclaim the party of limited government and rational conservatism.