"I think Mark Green will be a great ambassador - to whatever country," said Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem).

Green, the ex-Congressman who lost the race for governor last year, will be named ambassador to Tanzania. Maybe Huebsch couldn't remember where Green was going when he gave the "whatever country" quote. But there is actually some logic to sending him to an African country, as the Journal Sentinel notes:

Green, 47, has ties to Africa. He is the son of a South African immigrant, and he and his wife, Sue, spent a year in the late 1980s as volunteer teachers in Kenya, Tanzania's neighbor to the north.

Who says losing doesn't pay? Both Green, the losing candidate, and Rick Graber, who was Wisconsin Republican chair for the disastrous 2006 campaign, have been rewarded with ambassadorships. Graber is ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

There's precedent on the Democratic side of the aisle in Wisconsin. Tom Loftus, who lost a race for governor in 1990, was later named ambassador to Norway by President Bill Clinton.