IRMA, S.C. -- The only question left before South Carolina votes in 48 hours is which John McCain is going to win the pivotal primary here.
All remaining doubts that George W. Bush is no longer running as himself went flying out the window in the hours before the revealing debate Tuesday night among the real McCain, a surprisingly effective Alan Keyes, and this character who has remade himself into McCain Faux while trying to paint the real thing as false.
The Texas governor spent his public hours before the debate in this small community near Columbia presenting what he insisted was a new proposal on a subject he couldn't care less about: campaign finance reform. This foray into McCain territory was the latest in a slew of maneuvers since New Hampshire voted that are designed to ape as much of the McCain campaign message as possible to blunt its attraction and to slur the Arizonan as everything from a cash-guzzling hypocrite to the true ''insider.''
Nothing amazes me any more in this age of short attention spans, sound-bite coverage, and 30-second ads, but the extent of this latest fraud is particularly stunning. The $70 Million Man has been saying for months that he favors banning the unlimited cash gifts known as soft money made by corporations and labor unions, but not those made by wealthy individuals, thus preserving the part of the status quo that has a documented record of producing the worst abuses.
But on Tuesday, he tried to package such absurd, ''new ideas'' as banning contributions from ''lobbyists'' to members of Congress while it is in session, as if chief executives like Bush himself could be trusted to take dough year-round. And, in another gratuitous slap at legislators, he pretended to feel it is ''unfair'' that politicians can take surpluses from their campaign funds and transfer them to jump-start campaigns for higher office (as McCain did last year).
McCain was right to call it a joke and right to say that Bush's ideas would preserve the essence of the soft money system. Bush's ''proposal'' was a confession of just how much his victory here is dependent on selling the idea that he is not all that different from McCain, that he's a reformer, too. The fact that he would judge it worth the ridicule to make such a proposal just four days before the primary tells all about his fear that this race is anything but decided.
And in a race that is being decided at the last minute, it was interesting that also-ran Gary Bauer endorsed McCain, citing not the social issues on which he campaigned most strenuously but the broader goals of reforming the money system and breathing new life into the GOP. The truth is that so-called religious conservatives are anything but monolithic this year, and Bauer has standing with more populist activists who detest the establishment that Bush represents.
That goes double for Alan Keyes. In its preoccupation with McCain, the Bushies forgot about Keyes, who has the potential to be a thorn in their side in an election that might be decided by a tiny number of votes. On Tuesday evening, Keyes's supporters were thrice buoyed.
First, Keyes did an excellent job as referee-judge when he dissmissed the inevitable two minutes of bickering over campaign tactics by Bush and McCain as a smokescreen for insubstantial candidacies. He was so effective that the subject never arose again, to the relief of the live audience of Bush-oriented businessmen.
Second, on Keyes's central issue of abortion rights, his supporters felt Bush exposed himself as crassly political on an issue they care about fervently. Like Bush, they favor no change in the Republican platform's support of a no-exceptions constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, but they view Bush's personal advocacy of exceptions as hypocritical. His inability to explain why he wouldn't work to advance his views is to them an example of someone who sees abortion more in political than moral terms.
And finally, Keyes has won praise for his journey into the fundamentalist lions' den at racialist Bob Jones University not only to preach conservatism but confront the school over its ban on interracial dating. Keyes's stance contrasted dramatically with the see-no-evil visit by Bush earlier this month and his inability to explain why he had a meeting with an organization whose policies he disagrees with but refused to meet with the gay Log Cabin Republicans. His false claim that the gay group was supporting McCain only made the cynicism of his position more obvious.
McCain lacked energy Tuesday evening. He also suffers from his original decision to put negative commercials on the air here. But the bottom line is that his opponent goes to the voters Saturday with a truly bizarre pitch: Vote for me because I'm the real John McCain and the real John McCain is an impostor.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
