David Blaska:

One of Tommy Thompson’s former staff members relates how the governor backed him into a wardrobe closet at an event that had gone wrong and growled, “You are so fired!” Tommy fired and rehired the same aide twice that day.

Ronald Reagan retired his Bedtime for Bonzo image for all time when — seven months into his presidency — he fired air traffic controllers for illegally striking and endangering public safety. The man meant business!

One of Donald Trump’s greatest accomplishments (among many) was firing FBI director James Comey. Trump had perfected firing under-achieving apprentices on his reality TV show. Recently, Florida Gov. DeSantis fired the district attorney who vowed not to enforce state law. Good leaders fire poor performers. We have our own list. (When will the Uvalde TX school police chief be fired?)

Our only regret is that Vos didn’t give Mike Gableman the heave-ho on camera like Trump used to do on The Apprentice. The public has been denied the image of Gableman at the bus stop holding a cardboard box. Instead of an honest investigator, Gableman was always a partisan Stolen Election mythologizer. Like the Queen of Hearts, he was verdict first, evidence later.

Which makes him a martyred hero to too many Republican dupes like like N.J. and D.G. here in Dane County WI. Willing and eager dupes. They and the like-(un)minded gave Timothy Ramthun a round of applause at Saturday’s Dane County Lincoln-Reagan dinner 08-13-22. (Except from that one guy at Table 3.) A nominee who would have lost to the tooth fairy.

Ramthun ran for the Republican nomination for governor promising to decertify the the last presidential election in violation of state statute and constitution — and practicality.

The name “Robin Vos” went unspoken Saturday at the Concourse Hotel, lest dinner rolls be thrown. The man himself elicited a fierce booing at the Republican state convention this past May for explaining that neither he nor Tim Ramthun is above the law. Survived a vote of no confidence. Barely hung onto his Assembly seat last week in the Republican primary with 51.3% of the vote. Find where, oh ye self-proclaimed constitutional conservatives, elections can be “decertified.” Especially in the absence of any actual — you know — evidence. How many voters will you disenfranchise because they dropped their ballots into boxes authorized by their local and state election officials in order to get the result you want? How do you know they all voted “wrong?”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Our Republican party is in deep, dark doo doo if it thinks Robin Vos is the enemy. The Speaker has been Lord Voldemort to Wisconsin’s Democrat(ic) governor. Why would the leader chosen by 61 Republicans elected around the state put in the fix to keep Joe Biden in the White House? It doesn’t make sense.

• Wisconsin politics