AMERICA’S online satirical newspaper of record, The Onion, captured the political mood rather well with a recent spoof headline: “Topeka Mayor is Now Nation’s Most Senior Unindicted Republican.”

For a party that likes to think of itself as the true protector of the Constitution and laws, the past few months have been a little awkward.

Consider the roll-call: Tom “The Hammer” DeLay had to step down as the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives two months ago after he was indicted on charges of breaking campaign finance laws. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.

Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, is under investigation over allegations that he benefited from inside information for some share trades. Criminal inquiries continue that could yet result in legal trouble for Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser. Last month Randy “Duke” Cunningham, a gruff conservative congressman from California, pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion and fraud. Other members of Congress are the focus of investigations into alleged corruption. What’s going on? A cynic might note that political conservatives start from a philosophical assumption that man is essentially fallen and conclude that they are just trying to prove it. But a number of explanations lie behind the spate of legal difficulties.

Most obviously, a high level of corruption pervades Washington’s politics. In the past ten years especially, money has sloshed around the capital like champagne cocktails in a Christmas punch bowl. Politicians need ever-increasing quantities of it to fight expensive re-election campaigns involving endless TV advertising.

At the same time public spending is surging, giving politicians access to vast government funds that they can distribute. Since Republicans have controlled Congress for most of the past ten years, they are the ones with best access to that money.

It is not all illegal, of course, but the temptations are considerable. It is unlikely that the soon-to-be-jailed Cunningham was the only one who steered huge defence contracts to his cronies and wealthy supporters over the past five years. A second factor is pure politics. Despite the separation of powers in the American Constitution, the judiciary is heavily politicised, with state judges and prosecutors often being elected positions.

Since it is hard to remove a member of Congress through the ballot box — more than 95 per cent win re-election (thanks in large part to their largesse with government funds) — opponents seek alternatives. Mr DeLay’s difficulties owe much to this factor: he is the target of a zealous Democratic prosecutor in Texas.

Republicans are also reaping that which they have sown. The impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998 took judicial oversight of executive behaviour to new levels of eye-watering intensity. Some of the same prosecutorial zeal is now making life extremely difficult at the White House in the

CIA leak case. The political implications of all this are potentially large — as the party’s own success 11 years ago may demonstrate.

In 1994 the Republicans swept to power in Congress on a radical conservative platform under the leadership of Newt Gingrich. The triumph was owed in large part to the aura of sleaze that surrounded the Democrat-controlled Congress at the time. Scandals involving Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House, and Dan Rostenkowski, the Ways and Means Committee chairman (who later served prison time), disgusted voters who adopted a “throw the bums out” approach in the 1994 mid-term elections.

Could that happen to the Republicans next year? Voters are certainly in a sour mood. Iraq, of course, is the main concern, but a sense that Washington’s leaders are sinking deeper into a mire of corruption and lies is making it worse.

It will take a landslide to deprive the party of its House and Senate majorities. But this was the year the land started to shift, imperceptibly at first, then with more momentum as the legal problems piled on top of the political difficulties.

The White House is lying vulnerable in the path of any such landslide.

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