We were somewhere on the edge of Armageddon

...when the reality began to take hold.

If Hunter S. Thompson were alive and bearing witness to the current struggle for Republican primacy, this carny pavane of rainbow-tinted carrion, it would take three bottles of Wild Turkey, some fresh-ground pineal gland, two lemons and a sprinkle of Ibogaine just to wrap his head around how decayed the entire electoral parade of political whores has become.

Let's read the vile scorecard, shall we?

A filthy rich second generation ward-heeler with the ethical firmness of a marshmallow who wants to buy the election before the others can steal it.

A filthy and richly shaded ex-mayor, equipped with hot and cold running accomplices who regards it as a droit de seigneur that his city's police force should act as his mistresses's personal limo service.

A religious zealot who beseeches God to vote Republican, on his prop cel phone...That's a mockery. From a man of faith.

...And not that this sort of conspicuously worshipful behavior is an unusual public display in a crew that panders to the Christian power brokers as much as these characters do, but this one appears comfortable with freeing rape-murderers to strike back at his ideological opponents politically, and then lying about it...

A shallow, low-climbing Hollywood hack who's hoping that all the voters who can pull the lever for nostalgia will mistake him in a critically dimly-lit moment for that other Hollywood hack who managed to remember his cues for 8 years.

Some sort of schismatic Libertarian hybrid who would love to teach the world to sing themselves back in time to oh, say about 1931, on a magic carpet of negative charisma... just in time for the new dust bowl.

An ex-POW wartime flier who has let the evildoers treat him like a passed out crack whore in the back of Daddy's station wagon on a darkened street in the dirty part of town, for reasons one could only speculate are Manchurian in nature.

...And two low-hanging demagogues looking to squeeze as much juice for their pet hate and their clubby little wallets as they can before the curtain comes down.

In short, every bit of cast-off battle damage and detritus of the mid to late 20th century, wrapped up in a big bow by privileged white men whose only thought is how to finish the looting incurred by almost 8 years of incompetent imperial corporate rule to get their rancid piece of the American dream-turned-nightmare....and all of them running like hell from the mother of all bad report cards.

As my fourth grade math teacher once said...What a bunch of prizes.

These are the native choices available to the sincere non-criminal elements of conservatism, and frankly, to such adherents of that philosophy as can extricate themselves from the Bush-Cheney 'death cult for profit' morass you have my sympathies, for whatever you may think they are worth.

It must not be a pleasant prospect to cast a vote knowing that, regardless of whom it is cast for, the chosen one who scampers past the post first will be the executioner, undertaker...and final burnt offering of one's own ideology.