So here’s the dilemma that has many of us liberals struggling. I really want to kick back and enjoy the political karma Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are inflicting on all the shut-down, repeal-away, I-would-not-like-it-any-way wing of the GOP.

But I can’t.

For years, and years, Republicans have pandered to the neoconservatives and the rabid right, tacitly allowing the government to face shutdown again and again as a bludgeoning tactic to get their way. Despite endless rounds, it’s never once worked.

Don’t think for a second that I don’t have equal scorn for past similar stunts by Democrats, but ever since Newt Gingrich and Co. rose through the ranks and fellow Republicans let them, the 2016 nightmare of Trump vs. Cruz has been coming.

Now, Republicans are shocked — shocked and dismayed that after nearly eight years of unyielding vilification of Barack Obama and President Inevitable, they have to choose between an obscene fascist demagogue and a repulsive religious zealot openly banging the drum for the American equivalent of sharia law. It seems the best they can hope for at this point is for Cruz to win the nomination, lose the election in a landslide to (ack) Hillary Clinton, almost certainly lose the Senate and possibly the House, too, but still have a Republican Party, sort of, when the dust clears and the adults come back in the room.

“Sorry, Dad. I wrecked the party. Umm, can I have the keys to 2020?”

It’s so rich to see Mitch “hubba-hubba-nope-uh-uh-the-people-must-speak” McConnell, have to watch the trainwreck of the century from the top of the Senate dais.

Every day, often several times a day, I wonder, “How could this have happened?” How did the GOP get from Bob Dole to Donald Trump?

Sen. Dole was honest, forthright, often-mistaken, obstinate and pragmatic. He and many like him wanted to win, but he never wanted to win at any and all costs. Dick Cheney wanted to win at all costs, and so, too, did the growing gang of moral thieves they brought along. As honorable Republicans stepped aside, just bowed out or got kicked to the ground, people like Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachman, Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin, Tim Huelskamp, Marco Rubio and Jeff Sessions began diligently vilifying the political enemy rather than just attacking bills, policies and plans.

Each month, the rhetoric, the malice, the stridency and the raw hatred escalated.

I’ve listened to endless theories about how and why the growing circle of Republicans grew increasingly spiteful and intransigent. I get that strong-arm government is a tried-and-true tactic. That on TV, unflinching gun-slingers have an emotional appeal. But after listening to it all for months now, it comes back to this for me: These “new” Republicans do not, will not and cannot take orders from a black man, even if he’s president of the United States.

I know. Some of Palin’s best friends are black, and don’t roll your eyes. Time and again, culminating with Congressman Joe Wilson’s affront of, “You lie!” during the 2009 State of the Union address, almost the entire Republican Party has either taken an active role in increasingly common dismissive disparagements, or tacitly let them go when others freely used them. I cannot see them treating Al Gore or John Kerry the same way. They wouldn’t have.

I’m no fool. Not everything these Republicans did and do is racist. But you are a fool if you try and tell me that raw racism hasn’t pulsed through the past eight years. It’s struck millions of nerves of those turning out in throngs to support Trump. They don’t want to take orders from a black man or an Latino man. On some primal level for these supporters, things like that really matter. A lot. Many of these people weren’t even registered Republicans before Trump came to town. They are now.

By courting to, catering to and outright pandering to these impudent, misguided, racist voters, GOP leaders overplayed their hand. They created an atmosphere where Trump and Cruz could not only surprisingly exist, but thrive. The problem for the GOP is that a tolerable minority of fascists, racists and xenophobes has grown large enough to maul the hands that feed them.

The party of Trump and Cruz no longer needs and has absolutely no use for their former masters-turned-slaves. Trump and Cruz are now dictating the rules, making it clear that if they don’t win, they’ll split the party.

It’s a classic case of not being careful what you wish for. And part of me wants to revel in the fact that it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of bullies.

But this is totally uncharted territory. I don’t want a fascist or a radicalized Christian opportunist to lead the Republican Party and stoke fires of hope for segregation, xenophobes, homophobes and zealots who refuse to understand that a secular government is the only one that can last. I don’t want to see Republicans manipulated and extorted by these people, even if they did bring it on themselves.

I can’t imagine what the remnants of the mainstream GOP are going to do. Clinton’s lead in the polls over Trump climbs almost daily, and the electorate at large has only seen all of this as a side show so far. While the polls have shown something closer to a tie between Clinton and Cruz, Democrats would have a field day creating commercials about Cruz’s zealotry, opportunism and polarizing unlikability. Fellow Republicans have long been more vocal about their disdain for Cruz than even Democrats have been. He doesn’t stand a chance. And if by some miracle Bernie Sanders wins the nomination? Polls reveal that either Trump or Cruz would get slaughtered by as much as 20 points, and that’s before Democratic money starts putting the screws to either candidate.

The die is cast. Trump or Cruz? That either would win the White House is just unthinkable, and no matter how disengaged and disenchanted Americans have become with politics, I have no doubt, none, that neither will be elected. But if you’d told me a year ago that these two guys were going to be the last men standing for the GOP 2016 race? I’d have said, “Oh, sure. I wish.”

But now I see how dangerous it is to not take great care in what you wish for.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@aurorasentinel.com