Was what Scott Walker did legal?

By Ezra Klein

Assuming Scott Walker’s procedural maneuvering last night was legal — and, as I’ll explain in a moment, there are some questions about that — then it was also legitimate. Certainly as legitimate as the Democrats fleeing the state to deny the Republicans quorum. They did something procedurally extraordinary to stop the bill from being passed, and he did something procedurally extraordinary to get the bill passed.

It seems to me that the system worked. Democrats were able to slow the process down and convince both voters in Wisconsin and the national media that there was something beyond business as usual happening in Madison. National and state polls show they were successful in that effort. Walker and the Senate Republicans ignored the Democrats’ attempts at compromise and ignored the public turning against them and decided to pass the legislation anyway.

That was their prerogative, and now it’s up to the voters to decide whether to recall the eight Senate Republicans who are eligible for judgment this year, and to defeat Walker and the other Republicans in a year or two, when they become vulnerable to a recall election. That’s how representative democracy, for better or worse, works. The representatives can make unpopular decisions, but the voters can punish them for it. I thought that during the health-care debate, and I think that now — though I would be interested to see whether any of the conservative voices who were shocked and appalled by President Obama’s decision to ignore public opinion and finish health-care reform using the reconciliation process are calling for Walker’s head today. If not, I think they need to ask themselves what makes this case different.

As for the legality, this part is a bit murky to me, but there appear to be at least two question: First, did the rewritten bill really count as non-fiscal, and second, did the effort at passage violate Wisconsin’s “open meetings” law? You can read Barry Pump struggle through some of these questions here. Then there’s the issue of the legislation itself: Milwaukee City Attorney Grant Lagley holds that it violates the state constitution. I simply don’t know enough to evaluate any of these claims, but this effort is worth keeping an eye on. And here again, there’s a striking similarity to the immediate aftermath of the health-care reform law.