Ofc, last night the Republican State Senators pushed through the union-busting measure that everyone's been protesting about. Originally it was part of the budget bill, and you need a quorum to vote on a financial bill in Wisconsin, so the Democrats hiding out-of-state was working. By stripping it out and putting in a stand-alone bill, the Republicans felt that they could vote on it without a quorum.

Remember that previously Republicans were saying they needed to strip unions of their rights in order to balance the budget, which would in theory mean that this separate bill should also require a quorum. But whatever.

About all this Steve Bennen at Washington Monthly writes:

The road ahead is uncertain. The measure will become state law fairly soon, but there's likely to be a court challenge -- last night's stunt, among other things, may have violated Wisconsin's open meetings requirements -- and there's been a fair amount of talk of a general strike.

But while those plans are considered, it's worth appreciating the larger context. The political environment in and around Madison was already noxious as the debate over the governor's plan intensified. Last night's gambit only served to make the air significantly more toxic, enraging working families and their Democratic allies. Indeed, if the GOP were sweating over Democratic recall efforts before, Republicans have to realize they just put their majority in serious jeopardy.

If pushing the union-busting bill was the equivalent of poking the hornets' nest, ramming it through this way was the equivalent of beating the hornets' nest with a tire-iron and then daring the hornets to do something about it.

That may all be so, but please take note that Republicans did it anyway. No compromises. No hemming and hawing. No talk of bipartisanship. They had the votes, they figured out how to jump any procedural hurdles, and they did what their base wanted them to do. And now they'll suffer the consequences, betting that they'll be far less than pundits warn and that at least some portion of their ploy will remain in place when all the dust settles.

Imagine the national Democrats doing that when they had a majority in both houses of Congress plus the White House. Imagine all the progress they could have made.