Wisconsin Is A Disaster For The GOP. A Wonderful, Joyful Disaster

Pay attention to what comes next in the Cheese State. How crazy Republicans go here will tell a lot about America’s future.

by Justin Rosario

In case you missed it with all of the delightful drama surrounding the historic arrest and arraignment of the first ex-president in United States history, Republicans had an exceptionally bad week. That’s aside from their leading criminal, errrr… “candidate” being arrested and arraigned on 34 felony counts, that is.

Wisconsin, one of the GOP’s bastions of illegitimate power, fell on Tuesday. After spending an obscene amount of money to elect an election-denying lunatic to the state Supreme Court, Republicans were trounced by the Democratic candidate, tipping the court’s makeup to the left for the first time in 15 years. 

It’s really hard to overstate how good this is for democracy. Let’s try anyway.

How broken is Wisconsin?

Short answer? Extremely. After sweeping into power in 2010 on the back of Citizens United money, anti-Obama racism, and a healthy dose of complacency from Democrats, Republicans systematically destroyed democracy in Wisconsin. With the blessing of a Republican-controlled state Supreme Court, Republican Governor Scott Walker immediately set about dismantling unions in his state, one of the main sources of Democratic fundraising and organizing. 

After that, he gerrymandered himself an overwhelming majority in the state legislature and made Wisconsin one of the most difficult states to vote in. In a very purple state, somehow, like magic, the congressional delegation sent 6 Republicans and only 2 Democrats. A theft of 2-3 House seats.

It was everything Republicans dream of: The suppression of any resemblance of free and fair elections and democracy in name only. All given a veneer of legitimacy by a deeply corrupt state Supreme Court. Scott Walker’s authoritarian control of the state’s levers of power, however, couldn’t withstand the blue tsunami of 2018 and he lost. ¡Qué lástima!

Unwilling to acknowledge the will of the people, because authoritarian fascists are not known for that, the Republican legislature called an emergency session in the lame duck period and simply stripped Governor-Elect Tony Evers of power. Wisconsin belonged to the GOP, you see. Naturally, the state Supreme Court, still controlled by Republicans as well, signed off on the obviously illegitimate power grab. 

This makes Wisconsin a clear bellwether for how extreme the GOP is capable of becoming in order to maintain its grip on power it did not earn. The catastrophe that is unfolding in the Cheese State is sending the GOP into a full-fledged panic. We should watch what they do very carefully.

WTF just happened in Wisconsin?

If you were to sit down and design an election outcome with the parameters, “Make this as bad for the Republican Party as humanly possible”, you would be hard-pressed to come up with something worse than last Tuesday in Wisconsin.

To begin with, voter turnout was record-breaking for an off-year Spring election. How high was it? At least 1.7 million of Wisconsin’s 4.5 million eligible voters showed up. That doesn’t sound impressive until you realize that the previous record was 1.6 million for the 2020 Supreme Court election which also included the presidential primaries. 

It is almost a law of the universe that high voter turnout is good for Democrats and democracy and bad for Republicans. There’s a reason the GOP makes it as hard to vote as possible and “election integrity” has nothing to do with it.

So who drove that high turnout? According to the Washington Post, really pissed off women, Millennials, and Gen Z:

Democratic sources tell me that internal party modeling showed that in early and absentee voting up to Election Day, women outpaced men by 12 points, and the percentage of voters aged 18 to 29 was far higher than in previous Supreme Court races. While analysis of the Election Day turnout is still needed, it appears those factors held through Tuesday’s voting.

We’ve discussed this before but it’s really important so let’s take a moment and focus on it. Republicans have spent the last 20-25 years very loudly and very publicly screaming hate. No dog whistles. No coded language. Just naked hate. 

Millennials grew up watching this and then lived through Republicans destroying the economy. Gen Z grew up watching this and then lived through Republicans destroying the economy. The Republican Party has, quite literally, conditioned two entire generations of voters to view them as an active threat to their safety and well-being, both economically and socially. Now they are voting accordingly. 

Just a note here: Generation Alpha is growing up watching Republicans fully embrace white nationalism and political violence. Each successive generation is more diverse and less tolerant of intolerance. One can only wonder how Gen Alpha will come to view Republicans. I have my suspicions.

Republicans, some of them at least, are aware of the problem they have with younger voters. Naturally, they blame it on “radical indoctrination” and other such pablum instead of their own extremism. Heaven forbid the party of personal responsibility look in the mirror for even a single second.

This inability to take ownership of their failures is seemingly why Republicans continue to pursue punitive abortion restrictions despite it being a proven loser at the ballot box. The 2022 midterms apparently were not painful enough a lesson. The GOP should probably start paying attention to this. Biden barely scraped by in Wisconsin by a point. Judge Janet Protasiewicz annihilated Daniel Kelly by 11.

Here’s a key point to bear in mind: Donald Trump was not a factor in this race. Trump endorsed Kelly in 2020 but stayed out of this race. This was a backlash entirely directed at the Republican Party and its extremism. The backlash was so bad, Democrats made inroads with non-college-educated whites, the core demographic of the GOP. 

If I were a Republican, the only thing that would freak me out more than what just happened in Wisconsin is what comes next.

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The walls come tumbling down

The most immediate impact of Republicans losing control of the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin concerns abortion. Judge Janet Protasiewicz was clear about her judicial philosophy during the campaign. Humorously, Republicans were utterly outraged by her “partisanship” even as Kelly, who is a hardcore anti-abortion Trumper, has a well-documented history of extremism. He even advised Republicans in 2020 in their efforts to overturn Trump’s loss in the state. But Protasiewicz was the partisan here. Of course.

So, abortion will remain legal in Wisconsin. That is the least of the GOP’s worries. Without a Republican majority on the court, there will be a challenge to Wisconsin’s gerrymandered maps within months, if not weeks. That will be a game-changer for the state.

Republicans can kiss their safe, gerrymandered state seats goodbye. That means they’ll have to run actual campaigns and appeal to more than just Republican voters. Republicans are very bad at this, especially when they’ve spent a decade in a bubble only speaking to their most extreme elements. Think Ron DeSantis: A darling on Fox News. Not so good everywhere else.

As mentioned before, 2-3 House seats are going to be on the chopping block as the congressional map is challenged, too. Before you get overly excited about this, it’s important to know that Republicans are busy using other corrupt state Supreme Courts across the country to make Wisconsin’s gerrymandered maps look fair and democratic in comparison. Republicans: When you can’t win honestly, cheat.

That won't save the Wisconsin GOP’s state seats, though. While all of that is going on, expect numerous challenges to all of the voter suppression Republicans have put into place. Onerous voter ID laws. The ban on ballot drop boxes. Reduced access to polling sites. All of that is going to be challenged and Republicans will no longer have a reliable partisan ally in the court to uphold their election rigging.

That doesn’t mean Wisconsin is going to suddenly turn into a blue state but it does end any hope Republicans had of handing Wisconsin to Trump on a silver platter in 2024. Wisconsin is the only state that came anywhere close to actually following through on the GOP’s plan to flip the 2020 election results in the courts. Every other state Supreme Court rejected it out of hand. Wisconsin passed it over by one vote and Kelly would have happily cast that vote.

Those hopes and dreams are now shattered. Even if Republicans still have a supermajority by 2024, they won’t be able to reverse a Republican loss. They are, however, contemplating other things to do with that power.

Impeach! For reasons!

When I say we should watch what the GOP does in Wisconsin very carefully, I mean it. The Republican Party is well and done with the rule of law and democracy. This is especially true of the Wisconsin GOP. 

Maybe 10 seconds after losing control of the state Supreme Court, Wisconsin Republicans started to discuss impeaching Protasiewicz using their new supermajority powers. It should be noted that Protasiewicz will not be sworn in until August. This has not stopped Republicans from being absolutely sure she needs to be removed from a job she has not yet started.

If one were a cynical individual, one might suggest that the goal is to send a warning to an incoming justice that she better stay in her lane or she might be removed. The same goes for the other four non-Republican justices who might be tempted to rule against the interests of the GOP. Play ball or else. If one were even more cynical, one would suspect Republicans might go for the gold and remove Protasiewicz regardless. And maybe another liberal justice or two in the hopes of filling those seats with Republicans. At this point, they have everything to lose.

This brings us to the Republican Party writ large. As we’ve discussed previously, the historically corrupt Clarence Thomas and ideological extremist Samuel Alito are in their 70s and a Democratic win in 2028 strongly suggests the Republican stranglehold on the Supreme Court will end. Just like in Wisconsin, losing control of the Supreme Court would start a chain reaction leading to the long-term crippling and/or demise of the GOP.

For Republicans, a party already delving into political violence, losing control of the Supreme Court would almost certainly herald an entirely new level of desperation. This is the same Republican Party that brazenly stole a seat in front of the entire country because the court “belongs” to them. They stole the 2016 election because Justice Anthony Kennedy might not have survived 8 years of Hillary Clinton and that would have tipped the court to the left. 

At the very least, watching a state Supreme Court freed from the GOP’s corrupt control should provide us with a preview of what our future may look like. It will also serve as a stark reminder of what we could have had if we hadn’t allowed Republicans to cheat Democrats out of a Supreme Court seat and an election in 2016. Perhaps we should keep that in mind in 2024 and 2028 and not allow history to repeat itself, yes?

We should pay attention to how extreme the Wisconsin GOP becomes in its pursuit of retaking their state Supreme Court because it will be a microcosm of the sheer insanity we as a nation will face when Republicans lose control of the highest court in the land. Nothing will be off the table. Unwarranted impeachment. Manufactured charges. Domestic terrorism. And so on, and so forth.

The level of intensity the Wisconsin GOP brings to bear against their Supreme Court will inform us of what we can expect down the road. Justice Louis Brandeis once said that states are the laboratories of democracy and that is true. It’s also true that they are the laboratories of Republican extremism. Pay attention and learn.

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