How Walker survived politically is a lesson for the Trump administration.

In our report earlier, we noted that the “Resistance” to Donald Trump is unlike anything seen in the opposition to Obama, The “Resistance” Moves Towards Violence and Intimidation as Key Tactic.

The opposition to Trump is becoming increasingly violent, and explicitly seeks to drive political intimidation into personal spaces by confronting Republicans everywhere they walk, talk and eat.

This total war on Trump’s administration and supporters by the media, Democrats, and a vast array of well-funded leftist groups might seem like a reaction to … Trump. That would be a myopic view.

The tactics you are seeing play out nationally had a dry run.

That dry run was the 2011-2012 war on Scott Walker in Wisconsin after Republicans in the legislature passed public sector collective bargaining reform. A national coalition of progressive groups and unions launched a war on Walker, as did a Democratic prosecutor using the “John Doe” law.

That war on Walker had almost all of the tactics we are seeing in the anti-Trump Resistance, such as obstructive legislators, highly organized direct action, politicized trial judges, threats and intimidation, and invasion of personal spaces.

Obstructive Wisconsin Democratic legislators literally fled the state to Illinois to avoid a legislative quorum. Trial court judges issued outlandish injunctions, only to be overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but not before the damage was done to the political process. (The Wisconsin collective bargaining reform law ultimately was upheld in its entirety.)

Well-funded and well-organized leftist activists willing to engage in “direct action” such as taking over the State House:

Some of the protesters were so crazed that some locked their heads to railings in the State House:

The activists even impersonated Walker in order to run sting operations on unsuspecting Walker supporters. So deep was the corruption of civil society in order to accommodate the protests, that doctors openly issued false medical notes so protesters could miss work.

Democratic party officials “joked” about violence, as personal intimidation at the homes of Republicans, including Walker, and were physically confronted in public spaces such as restaurants, even in D.C.

Republican legislators were threatened at home and were chased down and harassed as they went to work at the State House.

Even using a bus to escape the mob outside the State House offered no assurance of safety for Republican legislators:

The supposedly non-political bureaucracy was corrupted to serve anti-Walker purposes, as police union members openly called for insurrection and joined the protesters.

Yet through it all, Walker never took the bait, Republicans never responded in kind, and just kept pushing forward with their agenda to reform government.

It paid off, with Walker surviving the 2012 recall effort, Republicans maintaining their majorities, including on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Wisconsin being a better place for the effort. There’s a lesson in there for the Trump administration.

[Featured Image: Wisconsin GOP Senator Glenn Grothman chased, trapped by hecklers, via YouTube]



