I just finished watching the George Allen – Jim Webb debate on “Meet the Press.” For conservatives wishing for Allen to retain his seat, their best hope is that Virginians were otherwise occupied this morning or that the state’s NBC outlets were having technical difficulties.

Before offering my analysis, I should confess a pre-existing fondness for Jim Webb. Like virtually everyone who has read some of his books, I respect him as an artist but even more as a man. Webb is a war hero, an outspoken and outsized intellectual, a patriot who has tirelessly served his country, and all-in-all a tremendously admirable individual. Our political system is richer when people like Jim Webb decide to enter it.

That being said, I didn’t think Webb would be a very good politician. Webb’s background didn’t suggest that he would take to the tasks that a politician must constantly assume – relentless and humiliating fundraising, the endless happy tolerance of fools, and an uncanny ability to condense complex issues into 90 second sound-bites.

I should also say that given the vital partisan stakes involved this election season that Hugh and I have frequently discussed here, I squarely and unequivocally support Allen’s re-election.

Or at least I did until this morning’s debate. Now I’m not so sure.

I'm not quite so impressed with Jim Webb and his biography. I am kind of unethusiastic about his candidacy, actually. What I want is for George Allen to find a real job and stop playing the Village Idiot of the U.S. Senate. I want to take away the committee chairs from the Republicans. As for Webb, he's not my kind of Democrat.

Having said that, I'm glad to see some conservatives recognizing what an embarrassment George Allen is. I especially liked reading this:

Even if Webb weren’t so impressive, Allen might well have cost himself the election with his continuing inept efforts to defuse “Macaca-gate.” Considering that Allen knew the issue was bound to arise in this morning’s debate, his defense of his comments was fairly shocking: He claimed that “macaca” was a word that he just made up on the spot when he called a young Webb volunteer that name while the video-recorder whirred.

When Allen offered this latest explanation, I’m pretty sure even in Massachusetts I heard the sound of half a million Virginia conservatives simultaneously slapping their heads and screaming, “Oy vey!”

Was that an example of a right-wing bullshit detector going off? Oy vey. That's happens so seldomly, it's quite refreshing to see.