Not so mysterious, really.

American Prospect has an article about how the GOP seems, for lack of a better word, stuck in a rut. Even in the face of an nearly-universally unpopular war, and every day new evidence of criminal behavior by conservative thugs, they just can't change their ways.

The truly astonishing thing about the latest scandals besetting the Bush administration is that they stem from actions the administration took after the November elections, when Democratic control of Congress was a fait accompli.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' hour-long meeting on sacking federal prosecutors took place after the election. The subsequent sacking took place after the election. The videoconference between leaders of the General Services Administration and Karl Rove's deputy about how to help Republican candidates in 2008, according to people who attended the meeting, took place Jan. 26 this year.

The president's mega-failure, of course, has been his decision to plow ahead in Iraq, the verdict of the American electorate in November notwithstanding. More mysterious still has been the inability of congressional Republicans to change course on the war. Last week, just two Republican congressmen voted for the Democrats' bill to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq by the end of August 2008. On Tuesday, just two Republican senators voted for Democratic senators' bill setting a March 2008 deadline.

Not so mysterious, really. The only chance Bush has of saving his "legacy," will be if Iraq somehow, against the odds, ends up to his benefit. And the same goes for the Republican congressmen who supported him and his war.

When something is your only chance, or even if you just see it that way, it is perhaps not surprising that you focus on it to the exclusion of almost anything else; sometimes, apparently, rationality.

Harold Meyerson, who wrote the article, finishes up by asking-

What gives with the Republicans? How have they -- not just in the White House but in Congress, too -- become so detached from reality?

-and then offers four possible explainations. I have another. I think the only thing that horrifies Bush and the people who supported him more than the plunge their popularity has taken...is what will happen if the whole truth ever comes out.