(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . We survived Phase 1 of the fight against WI GOP’s attempt to overthrow the Supreme Court election [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-09-22 The Assembly gaveled out of session on Thursday evening. They won’t return until October 10. You know what that means? It means we’ve survived Phase One of the fight against the GOP’s outrageous attempt to overthrow the Supreme Court election through an unconstitutional impeachment. You made this happen. Without your voice, your outrage, and your organizing, it’s entirely possible—and in fact, based on what we’ve heard, more than likely—that Robin Vos and the Assembly Republican caucus would have already voted to impeach Justice Janet Protasiewicz by this moment, and Wisconsin would have been at the center of an explosive constitutional crisis. It’s an extraordinary achievement in a dark moment. And even more extraordinary is the thing that, at least so far, has turned the tide: a voter uprising. WisDems volunteers have had thousands of conversations in Republican legislative districts—with floods of door knocks, phone calls, and friend-banking contacts. When you’ve reached out to voters, they’ve answered. It’s not just constituents’ thousands of phone calls, emails, and social media posts contacting legislators directly. There’s also this stunning statistic: a third of the people who answer the phone or open the door actually tell us they’re ready to volunteer with the Democratic Party. In other words, the GOP’s impeachment threat is backfiring. It’s energizing an outraged public, who doesn’t take kindly to attempts to undermine democracy and overturn elections. This threat is so extreme that it is dividing the GOP at the same time as it unites and enlarges the Democratic Party. And independent voters? According to the first poll conducted on this topic, they hate this impeachment plot. x 🗳️ Wisconsinites have spoken! Our latest for @ABetterWis finds voters overwhelmingly oppose impeaching Justice Protasiewicz. She has net positive job ratings; Republicans in the legislature are net negative. Read full memo: https://t.co/AHDwoNAbiK — GBAO (@GBAOStrategies) September 14, 2023 Still, you’d be fair to ask: why does any of this even matter to the GOP? They’ve ignored public pressure before. They’ve rigged the maps so intensely that even if the public has turned massively against them, they’ll still be fine. Not this time. What some of the more far-sighted Republicans are whispering to each other is that their impeachment plot might become the ultimate pyrrhic victory. If they move ahead, there’s a real risk for them that the impeachment gets thrown out by the courts . The law and Constitution are in fact very clear that there’s no basis in law for the GOP’s impeachment, as two former Supreme Court justices—one appointed by Gov. Tommy Thompson and one by Gov. Jim Doyle— wrote this week . And Republicans are realizing that if they did impeach, a maps case would still likely proceed. If those things happened, they would have cast the most explosive and unforgivable vote of their political lives… and then they’d have to defend it in new, vastly more competitive districts. That’s a lose-lose proposition. Which isn’t to say we should rest easy. Because the underlying and profoundly disturbing threat here isn’t just about the GOP overturning this one election. It’s about the Republicans concluding that abuse of their powers is a way to turn Wisconsin into a full-on dictatorship of the legislature, bypassing anyone in the judicial or executive branch who refuses to succumb to their corrupt demands. This isn’t hypothetical: yesterday, a group of Republican Assembly members introduced utterly baseless articles of impeachment to remove Wisconsin’s nonpartisan and nationally recognized top elections administrator, Meagan Wolfe. Their supposed justification is a litany of disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The ultra-MAGA wing of the GOP appears to be racing towards the idea of rigging the 2024 presidential election through the brute force of unconstitutional impeachments. That is a threat not just to Wisconsin, but, given that we’re the tipping-point state, to American democracy as a whole. The stakes keep rising. We have to keep ratcheting up the intensity accordingly. Got a minute this weekend? Join our weekend of action and knock on doors . Free on Tuesday? Join our virtual town hall . Know anyone represented by a Republican in the legislature (maybe you are yourself)? Send them to defendjustice.com so they can contact their lawmaker. We’re on the front lines, the public and the constitution are on our side, we’ve survived Phase One…and we’ve got to make this next phase a victory. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/22/2194878/-We-survived-Phase-1-of-the-fight-against-WI-GOP-s-attempt-to-overthrow-the-Supreme-Court-election Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/