Why hasn’t gop done this? Dems pass a law or regulation you don’t like, just get a conservative judge to block it. Are there no conservative judges??
It seems to me that if you have both a conservative governor and a fairly conservative legislature, like in Texas or Florida, there is not a problem. Ridiculous rules being ordered by the federal government in those jurisdictions get tossed out pretty quickly once some evidence comes in and the practical outcome of a particular policy becomes evident. After all, this is a federal system - this is not Europe where the central government issues edicts on everything because that’s how the country’s system was designed.
The problem arises when you have a lukewarm Republican governor or a lukewarm legislature, or both. In order to have people like that elected, particularly majorities in a legislature, you have to have a state that is, in reality, much more purple than it appears when you have (nominal) Republicans in the highest positions. That means that over the course of time, very few actual conservative or originalist judges will get appointed, and when Democrats are the governor, ultra-liberals will be nominated. Thus, in these actually purple states it is easy to find judges (even randomly, without forum-shopping) who will override weak-kneed Republican governors who probably didn’t want to loosen up on these rules anyway.
This kind of place is just where having tens or hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating and refusing to comply all over a state will have an effect. You don’t need it in a truly conservative state, and it will do no good in a genuinely liberal or leftist state. Just like elections, they are generally not decided by partisans on either side, but by 20% or 40% in the middle.