Talk about a lousy week (and maybe a lot longer) for Republicans

By Lee Russ

Friday, July 07, 2006 at 05:44 PM

For those who think the current Republican Party lacks everything but sleaze, it was a pretty good week.

1. Santorum desperately attacks his own president's immigration position

He tries to conceal it, of course, by attributing the amnesty program to that liberal bogeyman Ted Kennedy, but lets face it folks, Mr. Bush is "the guy" pushing it.  So how long does Rick-not-so-slick think it will take for Pennsylvanians to notice that he's essentially attacking the prez's position?

If you're wondering why he would do such a politically back-stabbing thing to his own party's president, well: (a) he knows as well as you do that Bush ain't popular, and (b) Not-so-slick is down a full 18 points to his Democratic challenger.

2. The aide to former Illinois Republican state house minority leader claims that the leader, Lee Daniels, was the one who directed that state resources be diverted for use in political campaigns.  The trick?  State employees who worked on Republican campaigns submitted phony state vouchers and the aide paid them.

Add this to DeLay, Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Burns, Safavian, Reed, Katherine Harris, and the Ohio "coingate" scandal over the state's workers' compensation fund and, by golly, I believe you do have a culture f corruption to a degree that dwarfs the Dems.

3. A populist Republican in South Carolina sets out to get on the ballot for governor, to run against the current Republican Governor.

This development, assuming that the populist, Jake Knotts, gets on the ballot, certainly does not bode well for current Governor Mark Sanford, or for the unity of the South Carolina Repub Party.

4. The Kentucky Republican Party is splitting deeply over the performance and electability of the current Repub Governor Ernie Fletcher.

Several state big wigs in the Repub Party have publicly called for the Governor to withdraw or at least questioned whether he can win.  But the party apparatus appears committed to him.

5. The NY Republican Party is sufficiently worried about their position and fundraising that one faction is attempting to oust the state Chairman.

Disharmony in the Empire State portion of Repub land may well cause the party problems in the federal elections come November, where current Repub congressmen are already rumored to be fighting uphill battles.

6. The Republican candidate for Michigan Governor is having to disavow an ad produced by Republican strategists which invoked Adolph Hitler's snub of Jesse Owns in the 1936 Olympics in an attempt to convince black voters that the Democats take them for granted.

The ad has large pictures of both Hitler and current Dem Governor Granholm, but it's creators, of course, say they weren't trying to compare the two.  And, also of course, there is heavy suspicion that the Repub candidate's allies are really behind the ad, despite the candidate's disavowal.

And that, folks, doesn't even get into the Iraq quagmire, the rape and murder investigation of American troops, the apparent attempt by some Republicans to begin smearing John McCain with new reports of McCain's uncontrollable temper, the claim by the last of the New Hampshire phone jamming case defendants that he thought the illegal jamming of Democratic lines in 2002 was approved by the government, the story that the NSA began making plans for domestic eavesdropping far before 9/11, and today's anemic job creation report--all worth individual posts in the next day or two.

Republicans; one of the few groups that can make Democrats look principled, honest, competent, and organized.  GOP could stand for Getting Old Phast.