It sound pretty dire. You could try flushing your soil, but if you really have root rot they may be gonners. Lip has a good suggestion if they are totaly on the brink of dying. My best luck with cloning is to cut the flower end off with about 1 inch of stem and push it into the soil almost all the way... I've only gotten about 10 plants cloned out of 40 and they were the 10 that survived.

Good luck!