Whims Of The Bosses

by digby

Lil’ Luke Russert explains why Jim DeMint is doubling down on his hold of the TSA nominee:

Tamron: So, Luke after that failed attack, or attempted attack, on Christmas, some people thought that Senator DeMint would back away, he’s certainly not doing that. You heard him on the Today Show and on Morning Joe this morning.

Lil Luke: No he’s not Tamron and one of the fundamental things he said is that his really is a national security issue. Senator DeMint is very uncomfortable with giving the TSA collective bargaining essentially being unionized and being subject to the whim of union bosses. He says it’s a national security issues and that the TSA should be like the CIA, the FBI and the Coast Guard and not be subjected to the bureaucracy that comes about when you have union control.

It’s was really interesting in his op-ed piece in his local paper, the Greenville Times, he said that the reason why this would be an awful idea is that a few years ago, when there was liquid, when the terrorists had liquids on a plane and were possibly going to blow it up, the TSA was able to implement changes within 12 hours. DeMint is of the belief that if they do change this policy and allow for collective bargaining it would no longer take 12 hours it would take two to three weeks, month for changes to occur.

Interesting argument from DeMint. Democrats say it’s absolutely ridiculous, firefighters are unionized, police officers are unionized and no way do they think of union protocol when they are in the line of duty.

It’s interesting all right. After all, who wants to have your very lives subject to the the “whims of union bosses” and “bureaucracy that comes about when you have union control.” (We should be grateful that those police and firefighters don’t follow “union protocol,” whatever that is, or we’d all be dead.)

I realize that Lil Luke was trying to convey DeMint’s position, but his characterizing of unions was not done in such a way that they would be attributed to DeMint, but rather as if they were a matter of common knowledge and the controversy was whether or not these particular unionized workers would be sufficiently exempt from the pernicious union influence.

He did go on to say that some Republicans didn’t think it was a good idea but others backed DeMint because there is an ethics charge against the nominee from 25 years ago. No word on what the whims of the union bosses have to do with that, but I’m sure it will all unfold in time.

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