Despite his well-known penchant for corner-cutting, I’m inclined to give Delay the benefit of the doubt that this is, in fact, a politcally motivated prosecution and all that, though I’ve still got homework to do.

But man is this a drag. Regardless of the merits, this is going to be long, weedy, partisan argument. Rich’s emailer may well be right that there’s a big difference between a federal and state indictment. And I’m sure his legal eagle’s point that conspiracy charges like this one tend to be hail Mary passes at best. But this is terrible turf for Republicans to get stuck playing on and tedious for the rest of us. But I’ve already announced my melancholia.

As a matter of pure political strategy it seems to me that the Republicans have a great deal to learn from the Clinton administration. They managed, as best they could, to translate the myriad investigations into their “ethics” into the general political complaint that everyone should “move on.” Indeed, that’s where we got Moveon.org, which at the time baldly lied that they were a non-partisan, one-issue organization. If the GOP can’t make this into an issue about the increasing desperation of the Democrats — which does have the benefit of being at least partly true — they’ll be in trouble. Not life-threatening trouble, but trouble nonetheless.

The problem, of course, is that they don’t have nearly as sympathetic a media climate to operate in. Which is why John P is surely correct this will be folded into Frist’s hassles and virtually any other legal scandal including, obviously, Jack Abramoff’s well-deserved troubles.

And just as obviously, this is all insta-analysis, subject to change and worth every penny you’ve paid for it.

Update: Do read Mark’s post below which I hadn’t read yet when I put this up. That’s useful homework.