I've already gone on the blogrecord with a prediction of a Simon win in November, but if Mr. Welch wants to make it interesting, I'm game. Just state the terms.

And I don't think that I'm "genetically-predisposed" against Mr. Riordan ("Mrs. Simberg, you have a bouncing baby boy. And he came out of the womb holding a sign saying 'Simon For Governor.' Just like his daddy..."). No, it's based on my observations and experience.

While I'm not a "rabid right-winger" (I'd be sure to fail the test on the gay, drugs, evolution, cloning, and immigration issues, among many others), I can certainly understand why Republicans would be loathe to support someone who funds the campaigns of rabid left wingers (like Maxine Waters), who thinks the minimum wage is too low, who doesn't even seem to know where he stands on abortion, who has no problem with confiscatory taxes or gun laws, whose own wife can't vote for him in the primary because she's a registered Democrat...

I can understand why Democrats would like to vote for Riordan against Davis, but I have trouble figuring out why Republicans would want to bother. And as the Democrats should have learned in the Bush-McCain primary battle, Republicans like to choose their own candidates, and not those that some members of the opposite party want them to choose.

And I have to assume that Mr. Welch is just pulling our collective legs when he says:

I wish I could give all the ?Riordan isn?t a Republican? crowd copies of the LA Weekly from 1992, when Mayor Dick was presented as the most craven of influence-peddling, Old Guard Catholic, right-wing rights-abusing firebreather we?d seen in a generation.

Really? The LA Weekly? In 1992? Presenting anyone to the right of Tom Hayden as an Attila-the-Hun reactionary? I'm shocked...just shocked.