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Whether hes looking back on the 2022 gubernatorial election or looking ahead to the 2024 presidential race, the advice Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has for his party is simple: Better candidates win elections, period.

The Rochester Republican is prepared to make the case to party activists that the GOP will fare better in 2024 with a nominee whos not former President Donald Trump. Hell be doing so as the party seeks to rebound from a losing streak Republicans have lost 14 of the last 17 statewide elections in this battleground state.

The most significant recent blows to the party came in April, when liberal Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, and last November, when Democratic Gov. Tony Evers fended off a challenge from Republican businessman Tim Michels.

Look, I think (former Lt. Gov.) Rebecca Kleefisch would have been a better nominee. I think Tim Michels (who beat Kleefisch in the GOP primary) did fine; I have no complaints with the campaign that he ran. But I think that we need to do a better job connecting with people on what the issues are that they care about, Vos said during a recent episode of the Cap Times Wedge Issues podcast. We spent way too much time talking about the past, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Vos who has served in the Assembly for nearly two decades and as speaker for half that time said Republicans should have broadened their focus beyond crime and made more of an effort to articulate their vision for the state.

We didn't really talk about taxes. We didn't really talk about, how do we deal with growing the economy? How about schools? I think we could have done a better job making the election about broader terms, Vos said, arguing that those conversations helped Republicans flip three seats in the Assembly and that the party needs to figure out how to replicate that success at the statewide level.

Wisconsin Republicans will be in the national spotlight in July 2024, when the Republican National Committee holds its convention in Milwaukee.

The convention will be good for the state, Vos said. Estimates on the economic impact vary, but Cleveland.com reported that the 2016 Republican convention resulted in $188.4 million in total economic impact for the area.

While the convention could bring more money into the state and help raise Wisconsins profile, Vos said hes not so sure its going to be good for the Wisconsin Republican Party but only time will tell.

Nominating Trump who won Wisconsin in 2016 and lost it in 2020, both by margins of some 20,000 votes would be a suicide mission for Republicans, Vos said.

The reason the kamikazes went to the battleship was to sink the battleship. They didn't do a kamikaze mission to miss and then lose the war. And I feel like that's what a Donald Trump candidacy would be it'd be a kamikaze mission where we know how this is going to end. And it doesnt take out the battleship, because Donald Trump doesn't win, Vos said.

The speaker said hes grateful for some of Trumps accomplishments in office, ranging from policy changes to appointing three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also wants a candidate who, like Trump, is a fighter who pushes back on the status quo, he said.

There are other potential GOP candidates who could actually win an election and then make similar gains, Vos said, adding that he doesnt currently have a preference in the field.

The case against Trump, he added, is rooted in an adage from former Republican National Committee Chair and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour that politics is the art of addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division.

I really believe that that Donald Trump doesn't bring new people to the Republican Party. He just really invigorates the people who are already here, Vos said. Well, in some states that works. And if you're running in Alabama or Oklahoma, you're probably going to be fine. But if you're running in a swing state, like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, (or) now Georgia, all the polls show he can't win. I don't know why we would pick somebody who can't win.

As for his own political future, Vos said as he has before that this will be the last elected job hell hold. He has no plans to run for governor, Congress or anything else.

But what about another term in the Assembly?

I'll do this as long as I enjoy it. I'm still enjoying it today. Time will only tell, Vos said. I'm hoping at some point we get a Republican governor, but my hopes were dashed in 2022. So weve got four more years. Well see.

This article has been corrected to reflect that Haley Barbour was the governor of Mississippi, not Missouri.

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Robin Vos to Republicans: Donald Trump can't win Wisconsin - The Capital Times