Stop playing nice

It's more important to Jim DeMint (R-Ft. Sumter) to be a dick about unions than to secure Americans against terror threats:

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-South Carolina, has been holding up the confirmation of Erroll Southers to be TSA chief, in an effort to prevent TSA employees from joining a labor union. Southers is a former FBI special agent and counterterrorism expert.

But is he chastened in the least about his role? Nope, he doubles down on the labor hatred:

"I hope this incident will lead the President to re-think this policy and put the interests of American travelers ahead of organized labor."

Not ahead of organized management, mind you, just ahead of labor in any form.

In the best of leaders, it takes serious self-esteem to be a national politician, but this degree of immunity from conscientious self-assessment is world-class demagogue.

Meanwhile, any deliberative body that permits a single member to block an appointment is seriously broken. It once worked, but in the end it has encouraged continuous temper tantrums from Republicans who cherish the rights of their privileges without any of the concomitant responsibilities to their fellow members, much less to the country.

One party is determined to make this country ungovernable. If that means thwarting the will of the majority, they have no problem with that. If it means failing utterly to grapple with any problem other than the politics of power, that's what they learned from their Republican forebears.

The time is long past to stop treating the Republicans as colleagues. At best, they are cage-fighting adversaries, at worst enemies of the republic.

Update (12/30): Yesterday, DeMint was proud of his obstruction. Today, he's out with a "new" story: It's the Democrats' fault. Hint: It's their fault they didn't give him his way.