This was to be a week to write about the Colorado political scene and the key variables of the year ahead. But to be a political commentator and not focus on momentous national events is to miss the ball squarely in front of your face, coming in high and hard.

Besides, if the Colorado legislature can defer the guts of its work for a month, I can delay that 2021 preview.

Having been on the road for nearly a month in a rented RV to travel self-contained and COVID-safe with the primary purpose of spending the holidays with our adult kids has provided abundant opportunity for reflection. Time away is good for the soul. And the head.

Though for a news junkie amidst the magnetic draw of a crisis, being away from television and largely from WiFi is its own challenge. As the story unfolded of the presidential meltdown leading to the treasonous insurrection at the Capitol, our main source became the satellite radio in the cab of this rig with the audio feed of what others were watching on CNN, MSNBC and FOX. And, of course, the news on our phones at every gas or rest stop.

Now, five days later as of this writing and double that by the time it is published, let me add my perspective centered around four questions.

Should anyone have been all that surprised? In a word, no. Donald Trump is who he has always been – all about himself; constitutionally unable to accept rejection; dismissive of bad news (“fake news”) and anything counter to his personal narrative; and with a deeply ingrained predilection toward authoritarianism.

From the moment he took the oath four years ago in front of, “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,”, anyone imagining him walking away from the Oval Office willingly, gracefully and in keeping with the quintessentially American tradition since Washington of the peaceful transfer of power was likely engaged in a flight of fancy.

The bottom line is that this election was not all that close. The result was never in serious dispute. Witness the affirmation of recount after recount, and the rejection of lawsuit after lawsuit. The surprise is not that Trump tried to overturn the democratic will properly cast. It is that he pursued his little coup so amateurishly and ineptly.

What to do with Trump’s enablers? The good people of Texas and Missouri can decide about Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, both hucksters of substantial intellect and glib tongues, but lacking a true north. They calculated that their electoral certification stunt would be cost-free – sure to be voted down, but endearing themselves to the Trump base for future pursuits. They can only hope not to live so long as to read for themselves history’s brutal judgment.

Closer to home, Lauren Boebert and Doug Lamborn can reap high-fives at gatherings of the Republican ultra-faithful in Delta and Colorado Springs, serving as living evidence of the near totality of Trump’s hostile takeover of a once-honorable party. But they have subjugated principle and ideology to cultish personality. Theirs are faces of the problem, not the solution. If they are representative of the future of the Republican Party, then it will soon go the way of the Whigs to be replaced by a new entity to carry the torch of modern conservatism.

The tougher question relates to all those who knew better; who were all too aware of Trump’s debilitating defects of character; but who went along for the ride in return for a judgeship here, a tax break there, and a deregulatory order behind door number three. Or just out of fear of some presidential Twitter attack (when Trump still had that weapon). History will demand an accounting and some will be purged. Perhaps their penance can be to rebuild a righteous, ideologically rooted party that forever forswears such demagoguery.

What to do with the chief instigator in his waning days? By the time this column sees the light of day, we may well have an answer to that question via impeachment or even the invoking of the 25th Amendment. While I often counsel restraint and accommodation, such goals have to come in due course after a full reckoning for what this president spurred.

To be lectured now by the likes of Ted Cruz on the importance of healing is rich indeed.

While these constitutionally-provided remedies may seem extreme given the imminent expiration of Trump’s term, what other sanction is appropriate? And what would be conveyed by the lack of such formal, unambiguous penalty?

The siege of our Capitol, the first since the British foray more than two centuries in the past, can be the long-awaited bursting of the bubble of catapulting political toxin. Or it can be a precursor to still heightened animosities and far more effective acts of sedition. Imagine our country some years from now in the hands of a leader just as venal as Trump, but far more competent.

It is not enough to throw the book at a bunch of lost, inarticulate, MAGA hat-wearing low-lifes who invaded our Capitol without holding to ultimate account the person who sent them on that mission.

What of all those who love this country and found their voice in Trump? This is the toughest question, and the one front and center in my thinking after 4,000 road miles, traversing rural America mostly off the interstates.

Across all that asphalt, I have seen exactly one Biden sign away from an urban setting. While driving by endless hundreds of Trump signs, some large and some small, here, there and everywhere. Despite his many faults, now unmistakable, he spoke to a part of this nation long alienated and overlooked.

Even if it may be a factor in some cases, it is too simplistically dismissive to ascribe that appeal and that loyalty to racism. Or any other “ism.”

There is vast need ahead for healing and rapprochement. That is as true in the hills of southern Virginia as in the streets of Philadelphia. It is one thing to dispatch Donald Trump posthaste. It is quite something else to reject all those who found a long-awaited, if unlikely, champion in him.