If you want to work quietly behind the scenes to kill something thats fine. Just do it quietly. Making the front page of the NYT in support of it doesn't qualify as "stealth" to me. Now Maloney et al are going to push towards their next objective.
Bush didn't say anything. Ari Fleischer floated a cover statement to the effect that the President supported renewing AWB. That's the way it's done. The statement defuses the situation for the President by removing him as a target. Bush has not and will not lobby for Congress to send him a bill.
All that has to happen is for the House to ignore Feinstein's renewal bill and the job is done. Everybody knows that the Republican tsunami of 1994 was a direct result of passage of the original AWB. The House was especially hard hit, if you remember. The House is not going to touch this bill. They know all too well the consequences of doing so, especially the DemoncRATS.
Do you ever watch Jay Leno's "man-on-the-street" segments where people don't even know who the vice-president is or how many states there are in the United States? It is astounding how stupid the average person is, even ones who are supposedly educated. Those people vote, and there are so many of them that it is they who determine the results of national elections, not the broken-glass Republicans and DemoncRATS. Strong rhetoric and real issues confuse and frighten these people. If you are careful not to trouble their tiny little minds you can get their vote, but if you shake them up they will run in the opposite direction. We are trying not to frighten these people. That is the name of the game.
The New York Times is trying to cause division in Republican ranks. They decide what to put on their front page, not Bush.
If you notice, they haven't mentioned the fact the Tom Delay says the AWB renewal is DOA, have they? They don't want knee-jerk Republicans to calm down. They want them to be riled up and bolt to the Libertarian Party or vote for Ross Perot or anything that allows Hillary to win in 2004.