Wobbly Vos

Robin Vos needs to go someplace quiet for awhile. He needs to find his happy place and just chill for a bit.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity for the longest-serving Wisconsin Assembly Speaker. Nothing wrong with getting ones exercise, but Vos’ moves have been frenetic, desperate and slightly unhinged. I guess this is what happens when your whole world is wobbling out of control.

At the root of Vos’ angst is a loss of control. His overwhelming majority is based on the most gerrymandered maps in the country. He’d likely still have a comfortable majority without those maps, but he still sees this as a threat because right now he can act with impunity and total disregard for public opinion. Without the protection of his rigged maps he’d have to pay attention to voters. The very thought rocks his world.

So, you can see why this would put a lot of stress on the poor guy, but he’s not handling it well.

First, he threatened to impeach brand new Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she so much as had time to sharpen a pencil or order stationary. Then, when it turned out that there was something less than total support for that idea even within his own caucus, he announced out of the blue that he was now for what he had been steadfastly against: an independent, nonpartisan redistricting process. That turnabout was seen for the transparent, cynical maneuver that it was, not only by Democrats, but by good government groups and newspaper editorial writers that have been advocating for it.

Hard on the heels of that misstep, Vos announced he would vet Protasiewicz’s alleged impeachable offenses through a panel of three retired justices. Then it turned out that he didn’t plan to announce who those justices were. Only David Prosser admitted he had been tapped for the job. The press proceeded then to lay out all the times that Prosser had refused to recuse himself from cases involving campaign donors — exactly the charge Vos said was impeachable for Protasiewicz.

Now, Vos’ neurosis has manifested itself in a new way. He’s threatening to withhold pay increases for UW employees unless the university gets rid of diversity, equity and inclusion positions. Never mind that we don’t know exactly how many of those jobs there are because DEI is a slippery beast. And do you really want to get rid of positions that might help veterans with PTSD or people with disabilities navigate campuses? And how is it fair for a janitor or an engineering professor to have to live without a pay increase that doesn’t even keep up with inflation because of something they have no control over?

It’s not even clear what the political point is. No, woke is not popular (even with me), but fighting it also doesn’t seem to be getting much traction among voters, even in Republican primaries. Ron DeSantis is basing his whole campaign on it and he’s not exactly setting the world on fire. The topic barely came up in the first Republican debate, even from DeSantis.

I always thought Vos was a pretty smooth political operator. But maybe he was just Bill Belichik. Just as the New England Patriots’ coach looked like a genius when Tom Brady played quarterback for him, Vos looked brilliant when his big rigged majorities were impenetrable. Threatened with real competition, Vos is starting to look like he’s not up to the task.