KARL ROVE TELLS GOP CANDIDATES IRAQ IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT-- BUT TRY NOT TO GET CAUGHT IN ANY CORRUPTION OR SEX SCANDALS

Karl Rove says it was the Republican Culture of Corruption in DC, more than Iraq, that did the GOP in last November. And he thinks Iraq won't hurt them much in 2008. Apparently he's lost his mind. But let's humor him for a moment.

Rove's clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture in Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.

I don't know whether or not Rove mentioned John Doolittle, Rick Renzi, Tom DeLay, David Diapers Vitter, Katherine Harris or Bob Ney in his little closed-door Tuesday chat with GOP House candidates and their (chatty) aides, but Bob Novak didn't mention any of them in his report of the off-the-record event.

Perhaps someone should, since, in all likelihood, at least some of these Republicans will be in the news between now and the Republican electoral debacle of 2008. Not to mention serial perjurer Alberto Gonzales, a bevy of Bush Regime-connected war profiteers, and... a certain over-tanned, weepy, House minority leader. All recent polling data shows conclusively that the Republican Party can't escape the DC web they created, broadly called the "Culture of Corruption," any more than they can escape the catastrophic war they started in Iraq. Off the top of my head I can name a dozen Republican House members being investigated by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, at least some of whom are likely to be indicted-- and I'm not just talking about the low hanging fruit like John Doolittle, Gary Miller and Rick Renzi. Friday's NY Times mentions that "Among members of Congress, Mr. Doolittle is far from alone in feeling heat from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department. More than a dozen current and former lawmakers are under scrutiny in cases involving their work on Capitol Hill."

Alaska has three members of Congress, a House member (Don Young) and two senators (Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski). It's hard to imagine that at least two of them won't be indicted-- possibly all three.

Abramoff is still a potent weapon if Bush doesn't pardon him and insiders say he will take down several GOP congressmen unless Bush springs him soon. If Abramoff starts talking Tom Feeney (R-FL) is likely to be the first-- but by no means the last-- to be arrested. Similarly, Duke Cunningham could certainly testify effectively against his old buddies, Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Virgil Goode, Jr. (R-VA), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Katherine Harris (R-FL) and God knows how many others. Many of these Cunningham-related crooks are also involved with several other unraveling cases, involving GOP rainmakers like Brent Wilkes, Bill Lowery, Thomas Kontogiannis, and Mitchell Wade.

And, since Rove, brought it up (Mark Foley), Republican sex and hypocrisy scandals certainly didn't begin and end with Foley and Vitter. "Everyone" in DC knows, for example, that extreme right-wing fanatic Larry Craig (R-ID) is as gay as he is homophobic. "Everyone" in DC knew about Foley too-- that he was gay and that he was molesting young men-- but no one told his constituents. (Now Rove wants people like Denny Hastert, Tom Reynolds, John Boehner, John Shimkus-- the people who covered up for Foley for years-- to claim they never knew him?) Even after he was caught, drunk and randy, trying to break into the congressional interns' dormitory, the Republican House leadership kept covering up for him; they didn't want to lose that seat. Well, there are at least a dozen Republicans in similar situations. Larry Craig's is starting to get noticed back in Idaho. Los Angeles radio hosts don't even use the word "alleged" any longer when referring to anti-gay Republican congressman David Dreier's homosexuality. Just last week a Columbia, South Carolina radio station did a spoof on Lindsey Graham's secret gay life and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's quick expulsion from the Army-- for fondling a private's privates-- is finally being discussed in Kentucky.

Something tells me that Iraq plus corruption is far greater than the individual parts and that the American public knows all it needs to to have already made up its mind about Rove's political party.