Short Sightedness

What are the Republicans in Wisconsin doing?  Do they even know?  You have the assembly republicans whoa week ago conducted a vote, which may have been illegal, which occurred so fast that some democrats sitting at their desk were unable to vote in time.  The senate republicans have attempted to force the democrats home by ending direct deposit and forcing them to get their checks directly from the majority leader, temporarily reassigning democratic staff to republican lawmakers, and fining them everyday that they are gone.  Now they have ordered their arrest.  Even though the Wisconsin Constitution clearly states that they cannot arrest a senator while in session, except under clearly defined exceptions.  And for the past four days the Department of Administration (DOA) has violated the constitution by closing the Capitol and is still defying a court order to open it, by stating that they were already in compliance.  Obviously if a judge orders you to open the capitol, they don't consider what you're doing to be in compliance.  This morning they stated that it will cost millions to repair damage to the capitol caused by tape, which is questionable since they used tape which the building staff stated would not damage the marble; and they also found several rounds of live ammo left by three entrances.  While I will not claim that it is impossible that a protesters was responsible for it, this seems too convenient to them.  The protesters have been completely peaceful with no arrests in 18 days and the police consistently stated how unprecedentedly peaceful the protests have been.

What confuses me is that their actions seem focused on winning just the one particular battle.  However it is very short-sighted and they created long term problems.  Violating the constitution and ignoring court orders will only hurt them.  Shutting their doors to the public, while democrats move their offices outdoors doesn't reflect well.  If the democrats are arrested, it will look bad on the republicans.  In general their behavior has been to ignore the impact that it would have public opinion.  While the democrats on the other hand are responding well to public opinion.  This is crucially because this will not end with the vote on the Budget fix.  Movements are underway to recall Republican senators, and a few may be vulnerable.  I don't that these actions and behaviors will help them and likely it will discourage their base, motivate the democrats, and possible help pull moderates over to the democratic side.  They need to start thinking about the long term, sit down and negotiate, and start respecting the rule of law.  However, I predict they will continue to shoot themselves in the foot.