The Democrats are trying to give away an election they should win in a walk by nominating someone with real problems -- like, for example, a first-term senator with a 100 percent rating from Americans for Democratic Action and whose middle name is "Hussein."

But we won't let them.

The bright side of the Florida debacle is that I no longer fear Hillary Clinton. (I mean in terms of her becoming president -- on a personal level, she's still a little creepy.) I'd rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal policies with none of the responsibility.

Also, McCain lies a lot, which is really more a specialty of the Democrats.

Recently, McCain responded to Mitt Romney's statement that he understood the economy based on his many years in the private sector by claiming Romney had said a military career is not a "real job."

McCain's neurotic boast that he is the only Republican who supported the surge is beginning to sound as insane as Bill Clinton's claim to being the "first black president" -- although less insulting to blacks. As with the Clintons, you find yourself looking up such tedious facts as this, which ran a week after Bush announced the surge:

"On the morning of Bush's address, Romney endorsed a troop surge." -- The National Journal, Jan. 13, 2007

And yet for the 4 billionth time, at the Jan. 5, 2008, Republican debate, McCain bragged about his own raw courage in supporting the surge despite (apocryphal) Republican attacks, saying: "I said at the time that Gen. Petraeus and his strategy must be employed, and I was criticized by Republicans at that time. And that was a low point, but I stuck to it. I didn't change."

A review of contemporaneous news stories about the surge clearly demonstrates that the only Republicans who were so much as "skeptical" of the surge consisted of a few oddball liberal Republicans such as Sens. Gordon Smith, Norm Coleman and Olympia Snowe.

They certainly weren't attacking McCain, their standard-bearer in liberal Republicanism. But even if they were, it was a "low point" for McCain being "criticized" by the likes of Olympia Snowe?

In point of fact, McCain didn't even stand up to the milquetoasts. In April 2007, when Democrats in the Senate passed a bill funding the troops but also requiring a rapid withdrawal, "moderate" Republicans Smith and Chuck Hagel voted with the Democrats. McCain and Lindsey Graham skipped the vote.

But like the Democrats, McCain thinks if he simply says something over and over again, he can make people believe it's true. Thus again at the South Carolina debate on Jan. 10, McCain was proclaiming that he was "the only one on this stage" who supported the surge.

Since he would deny it about two minutes later, here is exactly what Mr. Straight Talk said about the surge: "I supported that; I argued for it. I'm the only one on this stage that did. And I condemn the Rumsfeld strategy before that."

The next question went to Giuliani and -- amid great flattery -- Giuliani noted that he also supported Bush's surge "the night of the president's speech."

Mr. Straight Talk contradicted Giuliani, saying: "Not at the time."

Again, Giuliani said: "The night of the president's speech, I was on television. I supported the surge. I've supported it throughout."

To which McCain finally said he didn't mean that he was "the only one on this stage" who supported the surge. So by "the only one on this stage," McCain really meant, "one of several people on this stage." OK, great. Now tell us your definition of the word "is," Senator.

I know Republicans have been trained not to go prostrate at Ivy League degrees, but do we have to admire stupidity?

Mr. Straight Talk also announced at that same debate: "One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth." That and the fact that Democrats were allowed to vote in the Republican primary.

Even in the Florida primary, allegedly limited to Republicans, McCain lost among Republicans. (Seventeen percent of the Republican primary voters in Florida called themselves "Independents.")

That helps, but why would any Republican vote for McCain?

At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas -- tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals -- Republicans in Congress will support "our" president -- just as they supported, if only briefly, Bush's great ideas on amnesty and Harriet Miers.

You need little flags like that for Republicans since, as we know from the recent unpleasantness in Florida, Republicans are unalterably stupid.

Republicans who vote for McCain are trying to be cute, like the Democrats were four years ago by voting for the "pragmatic" candidate, Vietnam vet John Kerry. This will turn out to be precisely as clever a gambit as nominating Kerry was, the brilliance of which was revealed on Election Day 2004.