He’ll fight unions, and he’ll fight ISIS, but there’s no fighting the Iowa voters:

Gov. Scott Walker brought his Wisconsin story to South Carolina on Thursday, telling voters how he overcame protests and a recall effort, and suggesting the departure of a campaign aide this week was rooted in the need to respect voters.

In a speech to about 200 people at the TD Convention Center in Greenville, Walker indirectly addressed the departure of social media aide Liz Mair after news spread about tweets she posted before she was hired that disparaged Iowa and its caucuses, the first in the nation.

“One of my clear rules is, if you’re going to be on our team, whether on the paid staff or a volunteer, what I always say is you need to respect the voters,” he said. “Because really if you think about campaigns, it’s not about the candidate or the staff. It’s about the voter. It’s about how to help people’s lives be better.

“One of the things I’ve stressed … in the last few days as I’ve looked at the possibility of running is you have my firm commitment that I’m going to focus on making sure that the people on my team, should we go forward, are people who respect voters.”

Mair stepped down Tuesday just hours after her hiring had been announced — and shortly after the head of the Iowa Republican Party said Walker should fire her.

The offending tweets by Mair were these:

In other news, I see Iowa is once again embarrassing itself, and the GOP, this morning. Thanks, guys.

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) January 24, 2015

The sooner we remove Iowa's frontrunning status, the better off American politics and policy will be.

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) January 24, 2015

Note the dates. The tweets were written by Mair before she was hired, but apparently having those opinions to begin with was fatal to her consulting deal with Walker.

Upon reflection, I think Mair is wrong. I think having Iowa first is just fine, because you get to find out from jump street whether a politician is craven: i.e. do they support ethanol subsidies or not? (It’s this sort of lunacy, I believe, that caused Mair to tweet what she did.) Scott Walker supports them. Ted Cruz (and, to his credit, Rand Paul) do not.

Ethanol subsidies, like any agricultural subsidies, are a distortion of the marketplace and create all sorts of crazy incentives. It’s a policy that would make a wanna-be socialist like FDR proud, and only craven vote-seekers in the GOP (that’s most people) support them.

Like his support for ethanol subsidies, firing Mair (her resignation was clearly not voluntary) was a disappointing action for Walker to take. But hey, sometimes you gotta bow to reality, as Gil Fulbright hilariously reminded us last year: