Apparently, the absolute latest thing in Right-leaning Democratic politics is to sit down to dinner — as publicly as possible — with the filthiest Republican operators available.

And not just to sit down to dinner, but to wade right out into the stagnant pool that is Republican fund-raising.

Hillary Clinton, case in point.

Clinton plans a fundraiser this summer with Rupert Murdoch, the guy who almost single-handedly drove the media’s coverage of the Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones scandals, using blow-back from his UK-based tabloids.

And now, today, comes word that hits VDB even closer to home: James Carville and Mary Matalin will be holding a fundraiser tomorrow night at their home in Alexandria for Plame-leaker “Scooter” Libby.

Now look — Carville is the Democrat in that marriage, and Matalin is the Republican, and so presumably each cringes and deals with the baggage the other totes into the house.

But some things are over the line, in any marriage.

We have to believe that Carville could have stopped this event, or at least stopped it from taking place at his residence, if he’d been of a mind to do so. No one is more cognizant of political ramifications than Carville.

Which suggests a rather risky and high-profile attempt to rebrand himself, as a consultant moving with Republican candidates as well as Democratic, along the lines of the ethically-rudderless Dick Morris. And doing so in 2006 would free Carville to migrate to the Right well prior to the next Presidential cycle.

Now, that’s a harsh charge to make. And we make it only very reluctantly, because the truth is that Carville has always been something of a minor hero to VDB, since the War Room days showed Democrats how to file their teeth up good and sharp.

But unfortunately, we are left with no choice today but to break off all diplomatic ties with Carville, for the forseeable future.

Pictures like that above should now be viewed as nothing more than a damning historical curiosity, something of which VDB is more than a little ashamed, like the grip-and-grin photo of Sadaam Hussein and current Secretary of Defense Donald Henry Rumsfeld.