Brian Fraley, a local Republican strategist, said the divisiveness on display in the decision on the agriculture secretary was nearly universal, whatever the topic. Everyone wants to help farmers, but the political climate complicated things.

“Society in general is becoming more cynical and abrasive,” he said. “The filters are off and people just express themselves more crudely and quickly. They hit send too easily. The rejection of Brad Pfaff was as much about sending a signal to the governor as it was about his qualifications.”

On both sides of the aisle in Wisconsin, the current crisis can seem even more cynical and abrasive. Democrats have argued that pushing forward with the election last Tuesday — after the Republican-dominated Legislature refused to entertain the governor’s request to mail absentee ballots to all voters or reschedule the primary — put voters’ lives at risk.

Brian Reisinger, a Republican strategist, said that line of thinking “fires up our base and turns people off.” He argued that Democrats were “focusing on the flash points.”

When he was first nominated to be agriculture secretary, it didn’t seem inevitable that Mr. Pfaff, the son of dairy farmers who still pitches in on his parents’ farm on the weekends, would become one of those flash points.

“Oh, I loved the job,” he gushed one afternoon. “I knew the seriousness of the situation taking place in the countryside, and I took it very seriously when I traveled and listened and heard what was going on out there.”