The Republican Party just can't catch any breaks these days. Within the past three months, two sitting GOP Congressmen -- Tom DeLay and Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- have been indicted, as have two high-ranking officials in the Bush administration (Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby and top procurement official David Safavian). Even three of President Bush's top campaign contributors -- "pioneers" Brent Wilkes, Tom Noe and Jack Abramoff -- are either under investigation and/or are expected to be indicted in the near future. This, of course, leaves out the many leading Republicans who might eventually get tied up in the investigation into Abramoff's lobbying activities.

With all of these scandals (and more) brewing, it might be easy to overlook the fact that the Senate Majority Leader is still under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Republican leader Bill Frist, appearing on national television this morning, stepped right back into the spotlight, as Jonathan M. Katz reports for the AP.

While Frist might have believed that his nascent bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination would get a boost on the home court of "Fox News Sunday," apparently host Chris Wallace proved him wrong today by asking a tough question about his stock dealings.

With an ongoing investigation on the back of his mind, how effective of a party leader will he be? On FNS, Frist also said that he was prepared to invoke the "nuclear" option over Samuel Alito, thus attempting to block the Democrats ability to stop the nomination. Such a move would no doubt necessitate countless hours of behind-the-scenes jockeying to ensure that the almost every Republican would be on board. If he were required to expend effort "cooperating fully" with SEC investigators, would he really be able to find unity within his party over this tactic? Would he really be able to hammer through his party's ambitiously conservative agenda? Only time will tell. But judging by the past few years of his leadership, which have been relatively unimpressive even without an ongoing investigation, I'm not entirely bullish that Frist will be able to succeed -- at least without causing excessive harm to himself and his party.