Over 10 years ago, before Donald Trump could ever defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton, he had to first engineer a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. Prior to his descent of that golden escalator, the previous seven Republican presidential nominees had been named Bush, Bush, Dole, Bush, Bush, McCain and Romney.

Those names constituted something of a country club roster of the party’s mainstream establishment. The fact that four of those seven (all named Bush) prevailed and took the presidential oath did not mask the transition that was taking hold in party ranks.

A party of America’s “haves” was fast shedding many among the economic elite in favor of the dispossessed and left-behind. The party’s epicenter moved from the penthouse suite to the abandoned strip mall and down-on-its-luck Main Street.

If there was a precursor to Trump, and a warning sign, it came four years earlier in John McCain’s Hail Mary selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Her emergence signaled that celebrity, outrage and resentment were fast replacing old-fashioned credentialing as GOP markers.

This was a cultural vibe shift as much as it was any kind of strategic calculation or change in economic policy. Manners, refinement and conciliation were all suddenly out. In their place came grievance, division and isolation, all with a venomous, pugilistic edge and an acceptance of “alternative facts” when the real ones proved inconvenient.

Trump has now occupied center stage for a full decade, six of those years in the Oval Office and the other four in aggrieved exile. The Republican Party has been fully remade in his image. To be a Republican of any standing these days is to have fully bought into Trumpism or to have quietly, often shamelessly, acquiesced to it.

All of which brings us home to Colorado and the spectacle of Victor Marx, now the GOP nominee for governor. Absent Trump, it is impossible to conjure up a vision of Marx as a serious political player, much less his party’s choice for the state’s highest office.

While Democrats in Colorado began their ascendancy in 2004, their complete dominion over the state closely tracks Trump’s rise. There can be little doubt as to cause and effect.

Think back to a generation of Republicans who repeatedly won some of the state’s top posts — Hank Brown, Bill Owens, Wayne Allard, Cory Gardner, Gail Norton, John Suthers, even the late Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

All were plenty conservative in their time. But all understood that winning coalitions must be broad and that governing was seldom an all-or-nothing proposition.

Now try to imagine any of these individuals navigating the current GOP nominating process — part gauntlet of litmus tests, part cultish initiation ritual.

What have Colorado Republicans wrought in their place? For openers, there is no Republican in major statewide office. There hasn’t been for some time; nor is there a realistic prospect of that happening any time soon.

The most prominent Republican in Colorado, their poster child if you will, is Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. Though she opted two years ago to move from a plus-seven GOP district to an ultimately safe, plus-22 district to avoid a likely defeat.

While Boebert identifies as full-MAGA, props to her for having the backbone and gumption to resist full-court Trump pressure on the Epstein files among other issues.

As to the second highest-profile Republican around here, it might well be the disgraced felon, Tina Peters. Some brand there.

Boebert’s predecessor in her new district, Ken Buck, was a Tea Party favorite and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus. Despite those roots, his independence was too much for local Republicans and he became persona non grata in advance of his 2024 retirement.

While the party’s most recent gubernatorial nominee, Heidi Ganahl, lost by nearly 20 points and thought it wise to spend the final day of her quest talking “stolen elections” with the likes of Steve Bannon and Joe Oltmann.

If the party has willfully reduced itself to a clown car, then it makes perfect sense to designate a jester to lead the parade. Enter Victor Marx.

In a half-century of observing our state’s politics, I have not seen a candidate so utterly unprepared and plainly bizarre. An elementary-level media training class would instruct that if asked in a televised interview, “How many people have you killed,” the appropriate response is not to take an awkwardly long pause while doing the mental math and sorting through the possible answers.

Yet, candidate Marx is completely a product of this era. Stardom trumps qualification; lack of governing experience is an attribute; controversy is embraced; no offense merits disqualification. His appeal within party ranks lies in his outsider status and the contempt of those not fully on the team.

While Trump rode this formula to two presidential victories (not a third, no matter his never-ending assertions), the appeal in Colorado has been wholly absent. In the order of the last three elections, Trump lost this state by 5, 14 and 11 points.

Add those three numbers together and the sum will barely exceed Marx’s coming margin of defeat. Though we can then look forward to the inevitable squawks that the whole thing was rigged. It has become MAGA’s go-to excuse for this litany of electoral failure.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann