I would agree that certainly a lot of Republican municipal candidates around here didn’t hear of my offer for free editorial space to any of them willing to renounce Donald Trump’s bid to regain the White House.

Still, I am sure some of them did. Not one responded, though. Crickets.

I did hear from quite a few readers who thanked me for making the offer.

I sense a hunger from moderate voters, Independents, even some Democrats, who might be inclined to vote for a Republican for municipal office, as long as he or she makes clear they don’t support the MAGA madness that now dominates their party, clogging the wheels of government, denying election results, forsaking the Constitution, empowering white nationalist hatred.

Are there really no old fashioned Republicans left around here, fiscal conservatives who respect law enforcement and the dignity of a civil society, where no one is above the law and its time-tested system of jurors and jurists and access to appeals.

None seem willing to say so.

Sorry, if you can’t renounce the Trumpists, you are one of them.

I am not alone in thinking that, I am quite sure.

I am reminded of the chilling scene from the 1972 movie “Cabaret” when a young man with a Nazi armband stands up in a beer garden to sing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” and, one by one, people stand to join him.

I can hear those voices right here in Connecticut in 2023, as so many mainstream Republicans seem to embrace the growing fascism of their party, not speaking against its attacks on democracy.

This is how it begins.

People around you start standing up, arms out.

This is not far fetched. There is an evil force building, one not standing up with funding to stop terrorism in the Middle East or the assault on Democracy in Europe, and you can stop it at every ballot box.

It’s the line with an R in it.

There are weeks to go before Election Day 2023, and I’ll repeat the offer to make free print space available to any Republican candidate who wishes to make clear he or she is not on the side of election-denying, MAGA obstructionists and insurrectionists that now dominate their party.

While I did not hear from a single Republican candidate in my first call for Trump renouncers, I did get an email from Stonington Borough Burgess Kevin Rogers, an unaffiliated public official.

“I want to go on the record that I denounce former President Trump,” Rogers wrote, noting the dangers Trump poses to the country.

Thanks, Burgess Rogers.

Wouldn’t it be great to turn the narrative around, so that, one by one, in Connecticut’s beer garden, public officials like Rogers stand up to renounce Trump, and salute a better tomorrow for America.

d.collins@theday.com

This is the opinion of David Collins.