The wool will stay in place for a very long time, I’m afraid. This has all the makings of a violent revolution before it gets fixed. I just hope I’ve been dead in and in my grave for many a year before it gets there, and that my son has the good sense to depart this country before hand.
So with Wisconsin, where the new Chief Justice has decided to pick a fight with the largest newspaper in the state, she’s now guaranteed a hostile media will highlight every misstep she makes – and, without knowing her ideological particulars, based purely on how she’s screwed up so far, I expect we’ll see some real doozies – and a good chunk of Wisconsin will be alerted to the fact that they are moving towards being the laughingstock of the nation. With some luck, at the next election Something Will Be Done. And since they engineered a constitutional amendment to make the Chief Justice elective within the Court, well, it’ll come right back to hurt them even more if one of the current conservatives (and the Chief Justice is not the only semi-lunatic taking up residence there) should lose to a relatively liberal judge.
This country has a mythology of it being a meritocracy, and consequently bumbling public officials are often poorly tolerated, although personal charm can be ameliorative. Remember how Bush’s bumbling caused his approval numbers to drop into the dumpster?
