Breaking News: G.O.P. Loves Terror, Hates Dems

In their second story in two days framing the terror arrests in Britain as an unqualified boon for the Republican Party, the New York Times cites the issuance of "a flood of e-mail messages" by Congressional Republicans "hailing the breakup of the plot, and crediting the administration's anti-terror effort" without noting out that the Bush administration had no operational involvement in Britain's supposed disruption of the plot.

The story directly quotes Republicans ten times (out of twenty-nine paragraphs), while quoting Democrats twice. Even while acknowledging that Democrats were making "a vigorous case this week that the Republicans were mismanaging the war and making the country more vulnerable to attack," the story makes no supportive attribution. It's worth emphasizing: the story leaves Democrats voiceless, but quotes directly from Republican talking points:

The Republican talking points, reviewed by Mr. Rove and Sara Taylor, the White House political director, went out to state committees across the country, with statements like "Ned Lamont's victory over a distinguished public servant like Joe Lieberman represents the end of a tradition of proud Democrat leaders in the mold of F.D.R., Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson and J.F.K."

And finally, calling Lamont's victory in Connecticut an opening for the GOP to paint "Democrats as vacillating when it came to national security," the story fails to characterize the sixty percent of Americans who want the troops to come home as a political problem for Republicans.

UPDATE: Did the Bush administration pressure the Brits to arrest the suspects sooner than British authorities wanted? NBC says yes; Britain wanted to spend more time learning about the plotters, their backers and their methods (some didn't even have passports yet), but the U.S. threatened to kidnap a key suspect from Pakistan if Britain didn't start making arrests before Connecticut's Democratic primary. Part of the motivation for moving up the schedule for the arrests, NBC also says, was that Britain wanted the suspects to be in British rather than American custody, so they would have access to due process. (The British are turning out to be better Americans than we are.)

If true, of course, this would put to the lie the Bush administration's repeated assertions that they hold our safety above all else. If the threat was indeed not imminent, as the Brits assert, who in their right mind would turn down the opportunity to learn more about the terrorists' network?