So many scandals, so little time

It's exhausting, keeping up with Republican diableries these days, what's a lowly CaliBlogger to do?

I mean there's Plamegate, with Rove, Libby and even possibly Cheney implicated. There are new rounds of subpoenas for Frist and DeLay. There's Abramoff and Safavian. Et alia, et alia ad infinitum, or so it sometimes seems.

And that doesn't even include the regular old political stuff like BushCorp™'s continuing assault on the environment, normal evil-doing stuff like that.

Helpfully, today's WaPo gives a nice little round up of the most egregious stuff:

With Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove returning to a grand jury as early as today, associates said the architect of Bush's presidency has been preoccupied with his legal troubles, a diversion that some say contributed to the troubled handling of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court. White House officials are privately bracing for the possibility that Rove or other officials could be indicted in the next two weeks.

Bush's main partners on Capitol Hill likewise are spending time defending themselves as the president's legislative initiatives founder. The indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) for alleged campaign funding illegalities has thrown Republicans into one of the most tumultuous periods of their 11-year reign and created the prospect of a leadership battle. And while Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) deals with a subpoena in an insider-trading investigation, a bipartisan majority rebuked Bush over torture policies.

Most of the scandals have little direct connection with one another, but their accumulation in a compressed period has challenged a White House already beset by political problems stemming from the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and high gasoline prices, according to Republican advisers close to the Bush team, several of whom said they could speak candidly only if they were not identified by name.
...
Beyond the short-term problems, Republicans are particularly anxious about the sprawling investigations of conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose business and political dealings regularly brought him into contact with dozens of lawmakers and top White House officials. Among insiders, he was one of the most familiar faces among the generation of operatives and lobbyists who came of age when Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 elections.

"The one that people are most worried about is Abramoff because it seems to have such long tentacles," said former congressman Vin Weber (R-Minn.), a lobbyist with close ties to the White House. "This seems to be something that could spread almost anywhere . . . and that has a lot of people worried."

The Abramoff scandal has already resulted in two unanticipated casualties: David H. Safavian, a former Rove business partner serving as the top White House procurement official, recently resigned and was arrested on charges that he lied about and impeded an investigation into his dealings with Abramoff. And Timothy E. Flanigan, Bush's nominee for deputy attorney general, the number two job at the Justice Department, withdrew last week after questions were raised about his interactions with the lobbyist.

"The Abramoff thing is a lingering nuisance to everybody," said GOP lobbyist Charles Black. "I don't know who else might be caught up in it."

Twin investigations of Abramoff by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and a multi-agency federal task force appear likely to tar a host of lawmakers the White House has relied on for passage of critical legislative initiatives. At the same time, the House ethics committee, which has been essentially shut down over a staffing dispute, is expected to get back in business and look into allegations against DeLay and nearly a dozen other lawmakers, Democrats included. This is where the Abramoff and unrelated investigations could start to merge.

House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), a DeLay ally, is facing questions about ties to Abramoff, including his participation in a golf outing in Scotland that the lobbyist organized in 2002. And Rove allies have also been entangled in the Abramoff investigation. One is Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition leader who has struggled during a campaign for lieutenant governor of Georgia to shake off suggestions that he received Indian gambling money to mount a lobbying effort against rival casinos.

Some would conclude that BushCorp™ is just suffering secondtermitis, but I find it hard to believe that 2nd terms are somehow mystically jinxed.

Instead I prefer the formulation of an especially gifted elder Republican, Abraham Lincoln:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

BushCorp™ has been fooling some people for years, but his pious phrases and posturing are faltering, even with some of his most devoted advocates.

Will there come a time when George W. Bush isn't fooling anybody?