Has Andrew Sullivan finally seen the light?

I know I should select a partial quote from this rant of Andrew Sullivan's, but then I liked the whole thing so much, and it's such a contained comprehensive laundry list of why true conservatives should not vote for Bush, that I figured, what the hell...

Jonah Goldberg argues that worrying about Bush's fiscal record when he's fighting the war on terror may be legitimate but shouldn't bar anyone from supporting Bush. He goes on, referring to yours truly (i.e. Sullivan):

A blog which soared with high-minded rhetoric about how the war on terror is the test for this generation and that Bush was the right man to lead that struggle, now day-after-day tries to whittle away at reasons to support Bush in the fall as if the war on terror were merely another issue which can be trumped by any other issue you happen to feel more passionate about.

Maybe "fiscal conservatives" aren't defined by their fiscal conservatism? Or maybe they think this election isn't a choice about a single issue be it the deficit or, say, gay marriage? Maybe the election is about a choice between George W. Bush and the people he would appoint to staff his administration and the judicial branch and John F. Kerry and the people he would appoint and how those respective administrations would govern across a wide array of issues including first and foremost the war on terror? And maybe most conservatives find that a cost-benefit analysis on that question yields a fairly obvious answer.

(Sully again:) Fairly obvious? But Jonah himself recently pondered the following observation : "While I still think it would be bad for America if Bush lost the election to Kerry - and terrible for Republicans - it's less clear it would be bad for the conservative movement." Hmmm. And why would he say something like that? Could it be that Bush has not governed as a conservative in critical ways - and hasn't even governed competently in others? Let's list a few: the WMD intelligence debacle - the worst blow to the credibility of the U.S. in a generation; Abu Ghraib - a devastating wound to to America's moral standing in the world; the post-war chaos and incompetence in Iraq; an explosion in federal spending with no end in sight; no entitlement reform; a huge addition to fiscal insolvency with the Medicare drug entitlement; support for a constitutional amendment, shredding states' rights; crusades against victimless crimes, like smoking pot and watching porn; the creeping fusion of religion and politics; the erosion of some critical civil liberties in the Patriot Act. I could go on. Is there any point at which a conservative might consider not voting for Bush? For the editor of National Review Online, the answer is indeed "fairly obvious." But for people not institutionally related to the G.O.P., the only question is: where would that line be?

I take all of this with a grain of salt, perhaps a block of salt, because I've grown to use to seeing Sullivan speak complete sense, only to turn on liberals with the usual "puh-lease, give me a break" style of rhetoric that is such a negative trademark of so much punditry on the right (a style of rhetoric that he used endlessly, among other things, when arguing for what he now admits was a hugely misrun and misadertised war). This style of rhetoric, all dismissive posture with little in the way of substance (and the entire source of Rush Limbaugh's enormous success), suggests that common sense is implicitly a quality of the reasoning on the right, when - as has been seen for example by the colossal vindication of pre-war liberal complaints over justification and post-war planning for the Iraq War - this is decidedly not the case. Which explains my frustration with Andrew Sullivan, who is clearly intelligent but who can mix real sense with this kind of empty blustery posturing so randomly you just want to finally shake him and ask him to just LISTEN TO HIMSELF. And now, maybe, just maybe, it seems he finally has. But I'm not holding my breath.