I guess it falls to me to speak up for the thin-lipped puritans among us. I think Schwarzenegger’s conduct has been disgusting. I agreed with a lot of what Katha Pollitt wrote in the Nation about this race. (Definitely not a sentence I’ve written before.) I also agree with Steve Sailer: Gov. Schwarzenegger means that you won’t be able to tell your sons that taking steroids won’t get them anywhere. I’m not denying that McClintock has made a mistake in jumping on the front-runner as hard as he has. Nor am I even saying that I wouldn’t vote for Schwarzenegger if I were a Californian. He may be the best available choice, but it’s a shame California couldn’t do better.
And I still think that the state could have done better. If the party establishment had not swooned for Schwarzenegger months ago, why couldn’t the state’s Republicans have unified around someone else? I could see the argument for moving left in California to get 51 percent. To go left to get 38 percent seems gratuitous.