I'd just like to make an observation here about the Republicans, and the cost of their obstructive strategy. In the old days, if a president tried something like this with his appointees, he'd probably have trouble getting any further appointees through Congress.
The Republicans, though, by essentially blocking anybody he appoints, have left themselves no room to do anything worse. If they threaten to block everybody else, then not only are they pushing their image as a source of gridlock, they're also doing nothing new. They've been showing Obama their contempt since day one, and have yet to really do anything besides that.
The Republicans have left themselves with few options, because they've defined themselves by the passion with which they're against Obama, which means everybody has to buy into the same half-baked conspiracy theories, or else lose support from all the people conditioned to jump at this stuff.
Gentility leaves you options. If your throttle isn't stuck all the way up at a hundred percent, you can go faster and slower as you need to. One of Romney's biggest problems is that he can't be honest and reflect his moderate Republican roots without losing his fellow GOP members.
Ah, but then he has to make unmotivated shifts to the right, and stay there. Even in the general election, he lacks for manueverability. As McCain was forced to abandon maverick-hood for hard-right swerves, so too Romney is being yanked in the same direction.
McCain could partly pull it off, given his gruff image. Romney? Romney's going to look like an idiot doing it.
The Republicans are seeing their actions and their strategies mainly from a few strained points of view, and from few other perspectives. What is consistent from one point of view becomes ridiculous from another. And that's not to speak of the results.
To be too stiff is to be brittle, unable to bend before you break. You might not agree with how far I would take certain policies in terms of compromises, but our ability to come to agreements to bring our party together will help us outcompete the Republicans, who only cooperate at the last necessity, and half-heartedly at that.