The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s only conservative columnist…leaving! Leaving an opportunity, perhaps?

First of all, let’s be perfectly clear: Patrick McIlheran was no token conservative. He’s a conservative. A good one, who somehow got himself hired by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Good for him, and good for them for hiring him. Sure, he was a lonely voice in a vast empty cavern of liberalism. But he was a loud, fearless, conservative voice.

No more:

Patrick McIlheran, a columnist for the Journal Sentinel’s op-ed page since 2004, is leaving the newspaper this week to take a job with Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s staff.

McIlheran, who will work out of Johnson’s Washington, D.C., office, will research issues and write about them for the senator. McIlheran also will work for the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia, of which Johnson is the ranking member.

McIlheran’s last column for the paper is scheduled to be published Sunday.

Our loss is Johnson’s gain, I guess. Unless…

…d’you suppose the MJS will be looking for a new token conservative columnist? Because I might have somebody in mind.