The fact is, Andrew Sullivan, no matter how witty and talented a writer he may be, is just not that smart when it comes to politics — maybe not that bright altogether.

The British educational system has a strange property of educating people to write very well and argue and debate in a flashy, witty way… while really not teaching them to think or analyze in a way that will lead them to sensible, verifiably correct answers.

Andrew Sullivan is in many ways the culmination of this pathological educational system that teaches people to believe in things to argue in the most witty, contrarian and clever way possible rather than to believe in things that make some sort of internal sense.

Being a gay man from a working class background with AIDS, he decided that the most witty, contrarian thing for him to do was to argue in favor of Republican policies that violated every tenet of logic and common sense.

Indeed, the more competently and sparklingly he could debate in favor of their views despite their natural and intrinsic emnity towards him, the more cleverly contrarian he would be seen as.

And unlike someone like Michael Kinsley, Andrew Sullivan only dimly understood that there was more basis for believing or not believing in something than clever, witty contrarianism.

I think it was only the Iraq war that really drove it home to him that clever, witty contrarianism will only get you so far — and that in times of serious crisis, it is a horrible tendency that will lead you in incredibly destructive directions.

To his credit, I think he has really learned his lesson well on this point.

That does not mean his intellectual limitations are magically overcome, but I do see someone who is making an honest effort.

I totally agree with that. He talks about smaller government, but when he gets down to specific spending cuts, it’s a drop in the bucket. And the Laffer curve is dying. In 20 years even conservatives will wonder what the hell the contemporary GOP was smoking on that particular bit of nonsense.

Beneath the polish of his prose lies a towering intellectual dishonesty. And, despite the fact that his fellow travelers (conservatives) have publicly wished him dead from AIDS, Sully also never wastes a chance to stick it to his betes noire, Hillary and liberals in general. The conservatism he espouses exists nowhere; it’s all theory, and poorly supported theory at that.

Five days after 9/11, in an aside in a long essay, I predicted that a small cadre of decadent leftists in enclaves in coastal universities would instinctively side with America’s enemies. They did. Some still do.

Note, via Sullywatch for the previous instance, that this makes it two times that has he now altered that infamous quote, once to lessen its central accusation and now to claim it only applied to universities and not everyone on the coasts:

The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

It’s a little unfair to suggest that he’s just biding his time until supporting war without end is popular again. I don’t see too many other issues, if any, on which he’s switched positions based on popularity.