Thanks, conservative Republicans!

For taking credit where there is none to be had:

Mark Block, State director for Americans for Prosperity, said his group's filing forced the board to back down more quickly in the case it agreed to settle Tuesday.

Makes sense. That explains why One Wisconsin Now, and not Americans For Prosperity, is party to the proposed settlement.*

And here's our old pal Jim Bopp:

The proposed settlement "indicates that (the GAB) feels they are really concerned that the rule was unconstitutional, or they would be mounting a vigorous defense," Bopp said.

I doubt that. More likely, OWN demonstrated successfully that the rule would apply to some speakers that the rule wasn't necessarily formulated to reach. That doesn't make the rule unconstitutional, it only makes its application in certain situations unconstitutional.

The rule itself may still survive — and perhaps even many of its applications. (Atty. Bopp knows this, obviously. It's just that he's a bit less of a constitutional lawyer than he is a professional Republican rabble-rouser.)

Mr. Bopp is perhaps best known in Wisconsin for his representation of State judge Michael Gableman. The Wisconsin Judicial Commission filed an ethics complaint against the judge in 2008, which Gableman and Bopp fought unsuccessfully to have dismissed.

* An Obama appointee is expected to confer his blessing today. Conservatives can (and probably will) take credit for this as well. It goes as follows: 'See, if we hadn't arbitrarily and capriciously obstructed Obama's nomination of Louis Butler, he'd have got this case and shut us all up and confiscated our firearms in the process.'