The other day a friend offered me some business advice. "Most people around here vote Republican," he said. "Wouldn't you sell more newspapers if you were more favorable to the Republican Party?"

I thanked him for his advice, but explained that editorials don't have much effect on sales. Besides, the most newsworthy activities Republican leaders have been engaged in recently aren't appropriate topics for a family newspaper.

Two potential GOP presidential candidates, Sen. John Ensign of Nebraska and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, both fervent advocates of family values, have been caught in adulterous affairs.

The indiscretions of each were revealed in an artless, clumsy and lengthy series of missteps that underlined their hypocrisy as apostles chosen for their strict adherence to Christian values.

Their exposure also blew open the door to a little-known Christian society, The Fellowship, a mansion registered as a church, which is mainly a residence, club and meeting place for the powerful on C Street in Georgetown.

More on The Fellowship later, but the plunge in fortunes of the Republican Party, whose popularity a Wall Street Journal poll shows is down to 25 percent, has touched bottom.

The nadir of any great American institution is no cause for celebration, and inevitably its fortunes will improve. Already independents are drifting away from President Obama, but the wreckage of the party is wide and clear.

A superior brand of religious morality as part of William F. Buckley's fusion right-wing ideology was eroded by scandal and by separation of important religious schools from the increasingly politicized Southern Baptist Convention.

First were the disclosures of homosexual scandals affecting Congressman Mark Foley and national evangelical president Pastor Ted Haggard, who had reported weekly to the White House.

That was followed by the fall of Ralph Reed, the former "face" of the Christian Coalition, known for its militant backing of the "family values" agenda. Reed mixed Christianity and dirty money to achieve political power.

Over time, the great Baptist universities such as Baylor, Samford and Winston-Salem had freed themselves from the Convention, in part because of its emphasis on marginal GOP issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Then we had Sen. Larry Craig tip-tap-toeing his way to the fame of bathroom collegiality with an undercover police officer in the next stall. Now there are the defrocked moralists, Ensign and Sanford.

The fallen senator and governor were contenders for the GOP nomination. Who is left to help guide a resurgent party: Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin?

Newt is a serial adulterer; how many, three? I've lost count. Rush is hardly a unifier. He has only one note — a crude version of the Bronx cheer. I feel sorry for the attractive, peppy certainty of Sarah now in a state of confusion with five children to raise, calls from party bigwigs to return and critics picking at her. Poor thing, she really needs extended time off, as long as she likes.

The one titanic figure left, Colin Powell, who could have beaten both Democratic and Republican presidents he worked for, has been shunned because he won't squeeze into the narrow ideology the current leadership insists upon.

At one time, the search for leadership might have led to the C Street mansion, where Ensign lives, but The Fellowship is too secretive a place that disguises even good works such as the National Prayer Breakfast.

One former resident, Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor of Harper's, wrote a book last year about the secretive society, The Family. The dust jacket says:"Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism (and opposed to Communism), fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith.

"From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a 'family' that thrives to this day. In private, they preach a gospel of 'biblical capitalism,' military might and American empire… "'We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't.'"

A frankly critical expose' doesn't tell the whole story, but God doesn't live at the C Street mansion. The party needs His blessing, which in time they will have, Democrats being mortal, and sinners, too.

But one thing is certain, or ought to be, from the depressing recent history of the Republican Party. It can no longer say its brand is "holier than thou."