I was gonna say something pithy about Andrew Sullivan's 3,876,905th broadside against conservatives who don't agree with him on every single issue (which is a surprising majority, nearing 100%) ("That Arnold should represent this and the Republican Party is threatening to all sorts of people: to the joyless, paranoid scolds who run the Dixie-fied GOP..."). I was gonna, but Jonah Goldberg hits it outta the park:

Um, maybe that's true. I don't know. But can't someone be less than enthusiastic about Arnold without a Freudian motivation? After all, I'm not terribly jubilant about the man, but after scouring my subconscious I can't find prudishness as an explanation. Maybe Andrew could convince me otherwise if he could actually explain what makes Schwarzenegger a conservative. He's pro-choice, pro-gun control, opposed to prop 54 and his wife is a liberal Kennedy (liberal wives are problems for even the most conservative politicians).

Rather than get into a lot of theorizing about the libidinal fears of social conservatives, maybe Andrew should have looked for a simpler explanation: the guy's not that conservative and he will probably make a lousy governor, a point even Andrew concedes. Sure, this whole thing is fun and it would be a great joy to see Davis lose. But politics is supposed to be about more than fun and rooting for the "coolest" candidate.

Me, I'd toss in the pro-baby-murder "Catholic" thing as reason number one I'm not doing cartwheels over this whole thing. (Yes, I know, California has the right to slaughter infants in utero protected by their constitution; doesn't mean we should reward those who agree. Insert Nazi comparison here.)

For the record: I'd probably vote for Arnold if the race was gonna be tight (and I was, you know, a citizen of California). I don't know if I'd vote for McClintock in a close race, because he's bloodless, and I don't think he'd actually come close to winning. Does this make me a bad person? Arguably. Does this mean that I'm a sexually repressed homophobe who's scared of Republicans who enjoy living? Bleep no. If Schwarzy hadn't gone off the reservation (as so many "Catholics," like Sullivan, do) about abortion, I'd be out campaigning for him now, or at least actively gabbing about how wonderful he is. Does this mean that Andrew Sullivan is an idiot polemecist who paints in broad brush strokes because of an inherent tendency to self-aggrandize and marginalize anyone who lacks his un-nuanced (or overnuanced, depending on what we're talking about) view of the world? No, but we're getting there.