Liberals won and lost in yesterday's Wisconsin Supreme Court election — and this particular win/loss combination is good for conservatives.

Steven Elbow reports in the Cap Times:

Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley won a third 10-year term Tuesday, saving the liberal block of the court from near extinction. But the election was double-edged for Bradley and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as voters approved a constitutional amendment to change the way the chief justice is chosen, a measure that will almost certainly oust Abrahamson from the job....

Leading up to Tuesday’s contest, only the union-backed Greater Wisconsin Committee ran TV ads on behalf of a candidate. The group booked $102,000 for an ad attacking [the conservative challenger James] Daley, while Bradley spent about $510,000 on ads. Daley ran no television ads, and no one ran any on his behalf. Instead, WMC gave $600,000 to the group Vote Yes for Democracy to run an ad supporting the measure regarding the chief justice selection. The Greater Wisconsin Committee raised $280,000 to run an ad opposing it.

How could an unknown challenger with no TV ads beat a well-known incumbent with lots of ads? Daley was left to lose, and the serious fight was over depriving Abrahamson of the leadership position on the court:

The measure, which passed two consecutive sessions of the GOP-controlled Legislature and was approved by voters Tuesday, ends the 126-year practice of choosing the justice with the most seniority. The chief justice will now be chosen by the justices themselves. The position has been held since 1996 by Abrahamson, who won her fourth 10-year term to the court in 2009. Critics call the change a blatant attack on the 81-year-old Abrahamson, who also might also have to contend with a GOP proposal to set a retirement age for the court. The constitutional measure, crafted by Republicans and backed by Daley, was likely not seen by voters as ideological, said UW political science professor Barry Burden.

Prof. Burden observed that many voters probably saw the constitutional amendment as politically neutral rather than an important way for the liberal minority to retain some significant power, which at this point in the court's history, it surely is. Insert "Don't call me Shirley" joke.

The conservative block consists of four justices, with a fifth, Patrick Crooks, seen as a swing vote. In recent controversial cases, the partisan divide has been on display. Bradley and Abrahamson voted against Walker’s collective bargaining measure in a 5-2 decision....  At one point an argument concerning when to release the decision escalated to the point that [Justice David] Prosser and Bradley had a physical altercation....

I won't rehash the Prosser-Bradley incident. You can search the word "chokehold" in my archive to sift through that.

The point I want to make here is: Conservatives did not need another conservative justice to control the court.  In fact, a weak conservative justice would hurt the conservative cause, because he would make the conservative side seem more political, rather than as the dedicated followers of law they want us to see them to be. And if Shirley Abrahamson were stranded as the only liberal jurist on the court, she might gain luster as the venerable lone dissenter. With Bradley, there are 2 — a liberal bloc, however small.

That bloc can't win, so conservatives have nothing to lose. In fact, conservatives gain, because 2 justices voting together can more easily be portrayed as ideological and political than Shirley Abrahamson standing heroically alone.