That’s because something like it worked before.

For many Wisconsin Republicans, the violence of last week is a flashback to the Walker years when the alleged excesses of mass protests during the fight over the collective bargaining rights of public employees flipped the political script and lead to a string of GOP victories.

It’s easy to forget now that in the early days of the debate over Act 10, Walker was badly underwater in the polls. Republicans were rattled when a Rasmussen poll in early March 2011 found that Wisconsin voters opposed weakening the collective bargaining rights by a margin of 52 to 39 percent. Another poll showed that Walker would decisively lose a rematch with his 2010 Democratic opponent Tom Barrett. In April, a poll by Wisconsin Public Radio found that 61 percent of the state’s voters thought that public employees should have the right to collectively bargain for wages, while only 35 percent were opposed.

But as the protests swelled, public opinion began to shift. The over-the-top rhetoric and tactics of Walker’s opponents became the issue. While most of the protests were non-violent, Walker later wrote that the turning point in the fight came when protesters targeted his family home in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa. For many moderate and swing voters, that crossed the line.