The American Spectator held a breakfast earlier today with California state senator — and now Congressional candidate — Tom McClintock, a rare conservative among Golden State Republicans. Dave Weigel was there and has a good blog post here, noting that McClintock refused to take the bait when asked if he objected to Ron Paul’s foreign policy. In fact, said McClintock, he agreed with much of it. Weigel reports:

Several of the journalists in the room noticed McClintock hadn’t attacked Paul’s foreign policy. Did he agree with that? “On part of it, I do. When we were attacked on 9/11, the president should have identified the countries that worked with al Qaeda and the Congress should have voted on an official declaration of war. By failing to do that, we created this tug of war between Congress and the president, which is something we should have learned to avoid after Korea, after Vietnam.”

Whether McClintock will buck the foreign-policy edicts of the Republican leadership once he gets to Congress — as I expect he will — is something only time will tell. But at least he’s campaigning as something much better than a Bush-McCain Republican, and I’m cautiously optimistic.