Just when you thought Republicans had reached the outer limits of hypocrisy, cynicism and intellectual confusion, they reach deep down and find the strength to go further. And so George W. Bush, who only got into Yale because his daddy and granddaddy went there, now says “legacy” admissions to universities should be abolished; and Alan Keyes of Maryland is the new GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Illinois.

Who says the GOP won’t lift a finger to help black Americans get ahead?

Republicans make transcending their scruples look easy, but don’t be fooled – as with Olympic athletes, such “effortless” performances only come with years of training.

Start with Mr. Keyes. After the Democrats anointed Barack Obama as a rising star at their convention, you can imagine the angst in the smoke-filled room at the Illinois GOP.

“We really need an articulate black guy to run against their articulate black guy,” someone must have said. Heads would have nodded sagely.

“But wait!” some principled conservative at the table would have piped up. “Wouldn’t that be affirmative action? Picking someone solely because of their race? Or won’t people at least suspect that?”

Hmmm. It was true: The GOP had been maliciously slandered by such charges before, when President George H.W. Bush was accused of not believing in his heart that Clarence Thomas was the best qualified person in America to serve on the Supreme Court. Some people were really cynics, these Republicans knew.

So let’s define our search more specifically, someone said. We need a Harvard-educated black conservative to run against their Harvard-educated black liberal! “Black” is only one of many relevant job-related criteria!

It was a brilliant stroke. But apparently, it turns out you can’t find a Harvard-educated black conservative in Illinois.

So, like any corporation in search of top talent, the GOP refined and expanded its search. And when the job specs finally read: “Wanted: Harvard-educated black conservative anywhere in the U.S. whose ego and thirst for publicity are so bottomless that you’d shamelessly set aside previous denunciations of Hillary Clinton’s carpetbagging and move to Illinois for three months in hopes of getting a meeting to pitch another cable TV show after the election,” it was an easy post to fill.

It even works as a campaign slogan. “Alan Keyes: A Quota of One.”

Admittedly, Illinois has become a tougher state for the GOP of late, what with its previous Senate nominee having been chased from the race for having sex with his wife and lusting for more.

Still, when a man like Keyes can in a matter of days move from (1) rejecting a carpetbagging Senate bid as “against my principles” to (2) embracing a carpetbagging Senate bid as “my duty,” we’re witnessing impressive new proof of the power of the human mind to rationalize any behavior imaginable in the service of ambition.

Which makes for a nice segue to President Bush. Unbeknownst to us all, Bush is apparently a Crawford, Texas, version of Mikhail Gorbachev. A man who shrewdly worked for decades within the system, slipping into Yale and Harvard on his family’s coattails, even sending his own daughter to Yale to keep his true aims disguised – while secretly loathing the injustice of admissions policies that shortchange poor unconnected minorities even as the less able scions of wealthy white Yale donors take up their place in the plutocracy.

Talk about political courage! Already the GOP faces dangerous levels of defections this year, as the swelling ranks of “Republicans for Kerry” suggest. Once word of Bush’s new anti-legacy admissions stance sweeps the country club, it could start a stampede.

And who knows where this now-liberated radical will stop? Soon Bush may forswear his post-presidency sinecure at The Carlyle Group. After all, once you’ve had that heady sense of tossing over unearned privilege, it can get addictive.

So where some look at the Bush-Keyes two-step and see a story of shameless hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement, I say: Don’t sell these guys short! On the eve of the Olympics, they represent, in our public life, the kind of muscular flexibility in the face of principle that only a very few can ever attain.

Matthew Miller is a syndicated columnist and author. Contact him on the Web at: www.mattmilleronline.com.