They’ve got a deadline coming up, but the Democrats are confident that they can let the clock run out without actually closing the facility that they’ve carefully turned into the symbol of all American governmental evil over the last eight years. It’ll require a tremendous amount of baldfaced lying and epic-level hypocrisy, but the Democrats are up to the challenge. They were born for this.

Still, don’t worry: it’ll still all be Bush’s fault.

White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig, who initially guided the effort to close the prison and who was an advocate of setting the deadline, is no longer in charge of the project, two senior administration officials said this week.

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. “I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives,” he said.

I wait with baited breath for the day that this administration announces that the stubborn patch of crabgrass on the White House lawn is due to Republican operatives sneaking onto the grounds at night to spread seeds. My best guess? Probably May of 2011. They’ll announce it on a Friday, so as to distract from explaining why they still hadn’t closed Gitmo, repealed DoMA, or ended Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.