New Tactics by Dems and MSM?

According to this piece in The Washington Times, Democrats are formulating a new filibuster strategy. The piece notes, "The new filibusters are not based publicly on ideologies -- as with several of the nominees to the federal bench -- but on demands for additional information from the administration."

In other words, the Democrats intend to lie. Although the real reasons for the filibusters will, in fact, be the ideology of the nominees, Democrats instead intend to make frivolous demands for irrelevant, classified or unnecessary documents, and then base their opposition to Bush nominees on the Administration's failure to provide them.

From the Democrats' perspective, the move makes sense. Given their absolute dearth of new ideas -- and an uneasy suspicion that a fair proportion of the country actually agrees with the Republicans on policy issues -- the only way (they reason) to give people a reason for voting Republicans out and Democrats in is to paint Republicans as secretive, out of touch, power-mad evildoers. And that's the strategy.

Will it work? Perhaps not, but not for any lack of cooperation from the MSM. It's doing its part by painting the situation in the War on Terror -- wrongfully -- as a disaster. The LA Times today notes that "Support for Guantanamo Eroding in Bush's Circle," yesterday's Washington Post offers "U.S. Campaign Produces Few Convictions on Terrorism Charges," and The New York Times worries, "Some Held at Guantanamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say." (sorry - links don't seem to be operating properly).

It's enough to make one suspect that the press has bought into Judy Woodruff's analysis yesterday on Meet the Press:

"When you have that view on the part of the American people crumbling and you have people thinking, 'Well, it's not making us any safer in the United States to be fighting the war in Iraq,' to me that removes a huge chunk of the underpinning of the political strength of the Administration."

So Guantanamo is portrayed as a public relations disaster for the US ("creating more terrorists"), prosecutions of alleged terrorists supposedly aren't yielding fruit, and our efforts in Iraq are punctuated by the drumbeats of journalists' predictions of doom. Could it be that -- on journalists' part -- the wish is father to the thought?