A pretty entertaining, temporary theme park was installed in Colorado Springs’ Broadmoor World Arena last weekend.

Call it Republican Fantasyland. Or maybe just plain ol’ Conspiracyland.

Just like the artificial world we all loved as kids, it had plenty of fantastical story lines, an Enchanted Forest of cheering fenceposts, and a cast of characters as colorful as any at the real Disney World.

Nominally, this theme park was the GOP’s state assembly, where 3,772 delegates gathered to pick statewide candidates for the June 28 primary ballot. I didn’t see much resemblance to the actual, real Republican Party I know, however; the party of Bob Gardner, Bill Owens and Dick Wadhams, that is.

That’s the problem with Fantasyland. It’s great to visit for a day or two, but too many Colorado Republicans have taken up permanent residence there, which means they are likely to cede reality to the Democrats again come November.

It took all of a half-hour for Conspiracyland to erupt in boos and hisses when state party Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown told the delegates they would be voting by electronic device.

There was a blizzard of motions to move to paper ballots, but those efforts failed when Burton Brown explained that the assembly would actually have to be delayed to another day if it had to switch its voting methods.

Then the Disney characters took the stage in force. First off was state Rep. Ron Hanks, aka Gaston, that beefy character in “Beauty and the Beast” who likes to shoot everything in sight.

Hanks launched his candidacy with a video of him shooting an old Xerox copy machine emblazoned with a “Dominion” sign. Hanks says the Dominion voting machines that dominate in Colo

rado are manipulated by the Chinese through the internet.

And yet, Gaston was the hero of the hour Saturday.

Hanks won the top-line designation in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, according to my colleague, Colorado Politics reporter Ernest Luning, who was there for the festivities Saturday.

“I fully expected Donald Trump to win in 2020 — and he did,” Hanks said to a roar of cheers from the Enchanted Forest of fenceposts. “I expected him to drain the swamp in D.C. while we fought to turn this state back toward liberty,” Hanks said. “What we saw on election night in 2020, it changed everything, just like the changes we felt after 9/11.”

GOP delegates on Saturday also delivered a win to Cruella de Vil, aka Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who was indicted last month on allegations she helped others breach secure voting equipment in an effort to prove the election system was compromised, according to Luning. She is also being investigated by the FBI and she kicked a Grand Junction police officer while being arrested.

“Kind of hard to make the case Republicans are the party of law and order if she is a statewide candidate,” former state Republican party leader Wadhams argued in a recent column.

And yet the delegates chanted “Tina, Tina,” like she was a rock star, and gave her a standing O as she spoke.

The event also featured a speech by the bearded baddie Jafar, aka Joe Oltmann, a prominent Colorado conspiracy theorist who once suggested that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis be hanged for being a traitor.

Oltmann urged enthusiastic delegates on Saturday to “go out there and be an ambassador for truth.”

The problem with all this for Republicans in Colorado is, you can’t win without the base, but it’s hard to win with it, too.

“Republicans have a math problem as much as a political problem,” my esteemed colleague and longtime political columnist Joey Bunch told me, ”and indulging in fantasy ain’t helping. In fact, you could bet Trump’s tax returns that it’s killing their chances to win back Colorado.”

To begin with, it’s impossible to know how many members of the GOP base won’t vote this November, or at least not by mail ballot, which lessens the likelihood they’ll vote at all.

That’s a trust problem of Trump’s making. Older voters, the GOP’s key demographic, favor mail ballots, the last census told us.

“That’s subtraction, before Republicans can even get their shoes on to go find additions,” as Joey puts it.

As of March 31, there were 1,071,014 Democrats and 1,669,355 unaffiliated voters on the active voter rolls. Republicans? Third place: 956,734.

The Colorado GOP, then, is 50,000 votes down to the Democrats right out of the gate. Where are they going to make that up? What are they offering moderate Republicans, much less moderate Dems or unaffiliated voters? Apparently, they’re offering Marjorie Taylor Greene, who starred at the recent El Paso County annual fundraising gala, who more recently took the stage for white nationalists. That’s not helpful.

Republican elder Wadhams echoed this sentiment in his recent column: “Unaffiliated voters will be looking for real answers from Republican candidates on the real issues of inflation, crime and COVID shutdowns. They do not want to hear about stolen election conspiracy theories that make Republican candidates look like unserious buffoons.”

Colorado Republicans need to find some adults to take them home from Fantasyland. It’s time for some serious reality before the primary in June if they want to make gains this fall.

As Wadhams has said so well, Colorado’s Republican Party needs a real hero right now, “rooted in reality and refusing to tilt at windmills,” who can chase these Gastons and Goofys and Cruellas and Jafars out of the tent.

Let me turn to Mr. Bunch for the last word: “There are no real swans in Swan Lake, and the president running the country is in the White House, not on a golf course in Florida. That’s reality.”