There’s not a soul in the state who can match a Senate Bull Moose when it comes to bragging he’s a true conservative – that he’s more conservative than the Governor or any politician around.

But then the Bull Mosses slipped.

From the day the Senate came to town Phil Berger’s Medicaid Czar, Senator Ralph Hise the Mountain Statistician, made no bones at all about his loathing for Community Care of North Carolina.

And when the House budget (which was balanced) landed on his desk, he rewrote it to shut down Community Care. And every other Bull Moose went along.

But then, it turned out, Hise hadn’t told his fellow Senators the whole story.

The Czar had ordered State Auditor Beth Wood to do an audit of Community Care but instead of showing what he wanted it showed the opposite – that Community Care saved taxpayers over $300 million a year by cutting Medicaid spending.

Which meant the minute Hise shut Community Care down Medicaid spending it was going to go up $300 million.

Which Hise knew when he passed his bill.

But hadn’t told his fellow Senators.

And worse, he hadn’t added a single penny to the budget to cover the new spending he’d just created.

So the Bull Mooses were still sitting in Raleigh when Beth Woods’s audit landed in newspapers and the razor-edged question landed on their doorstep: What kind of true conservative passes an unbalanced budget that has a $300 million hole in it?