If you think our nation’s capitol, the District of Columbia, is a den of mutants and grotesques, you should see it today. If you wanna take in something really ugly, drop by the luxurious Marriott Waldman Hotel. There, not far from our national zoo, this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference continues sorrowfully unabated.

Witness Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday.

Oozing the wit and charm, if not the face, of an iguana, good old Mitch played to his strengths. He lied. He told the squarest, nastiest people on Earth they were as fun as naked Playmates. The only difference between them, he said, and a limousine packed with coked-up, topless Anna Nicole Smiths was that they were intellectually infallible.

Don’t for a second think Mitchell doesn’t believe that. Why can’t the same people who have never, ever, not once, made an error be as much fun as a monkey stroking a kitten? That’s my metaphor, though a might strained, for tanks rolling across Iraq. It’s fun to know that taxes on capital gains are The Holocaust. It’s a fucking lark, I think.

The one thing you can be thankful for while this troll-a-thon continues, drinking plenty and stiffing the bartenders plenty more, is that these people will show you their ass. There’s some redemption in that; the truth is a beautiful thing. So if you want to know what a conservative really is, just watch. Cal Thomas, for example, is a celebrity stalwart Con:

Well I’m really glad, Genevieve, that you played the Rachel Maddow clip because I think that she is the best argument in favor of her parents using contraception. I would be all for that.

A conservative is an aging, pinched-face asshole. The sort of man who’s afraid people will see him as ugly, so he dyes his hair. But when he’s confronted with an opposing political personality, he charms his friends by wishing that person were dead. And that’s what is beautiful.