Since 1998, only four Republican senators have had worse ACU scores than John McCain -- and none were from Goldwater country: Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter. The last time McCain ranked this far down in his class, he was at the Naval Academy.

In fact, McCain and Romney are mirror opposites: As Romney had to tailor his conservative views to the liberal voters of Massachusetts, McCain has had to tailor his liberal views to the conservative voters of Arizona. While Romney's record in a liberal bastion is as bad as it will ever be, McCain's record from a conservative bastion is as good as it will ever be. Which isn't very good.

In the immortal words of -- well, me, actually: Always choose a strong conservative from a blue state over a lukewarm conservative from a red state.

Bob Dole from Kansas had a pretty good voting record, too. But no one fully believed he believed it. Another feather in his cap was that he didn't burden voters with a "Straight Talk Express," a means of conveyance even more useless and idiotic than an electric car.

Even McCain's supporters on the Spaghetti-Spined Express know he can't be trusted on social issues like abortion. I notice how everyone seems to agree that of course Rudy Giuliani's voters would go to McCain.

Why would that be? On the two seminal issues of our time other than abortion -- taxes and the war on terrorism -- the two could not be more different.

Rudy cut taxes in New York City and, as a presidential candidate, proposed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history.

McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts twice.

Rudy supports torturing terrorists -- or using "enhanced interrogation techniques," as they say, announcing in one of the debates: "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of."

McCain is hysterical about pouring water down terrorists' noses and campaigns to shut down Guantanamo.

He demands that no terrorist interrogation be "degrading" -- perhaps recalling how not degrading it was for people in the upper floors of the Twin Towers to have to leap to their deaths rather than be burned alive on Sept. 11.

So why is it obvious to everyone that Rudy would endorse McCain?