This photo of how the sausage is made comes courtesy of Art Wittich’s Facebook page, in which he complains that his fellow Republican voted to “emasculate” his party’s leadership by supporting Medicaid expansion. That bill finally passed, but not before 49 Republicans voted to adjourn the entire 2015 session of the Montana legislature rather than see it debated on the House floor. Later that night, after moderates in the GOP joined Democrats to pass a bill central to his legislative agenda, Governor Bullock vetoed a modest Republican tax cut. With only a few weeks to go in our 90-day session, comity has disintegrated in Helena. You can read about it in this week’s column in the Missoula Independent, which also contains this wonderful quote by Rep. Randy Pinocci (R-Sun River):

“The majority of my constituents want smaller government. What does the taxpayer want? I hear every excuse, but we spend money on [expletive] that’s ridiculous. I want to go to the Deaf and Blind School and see if they’re struggling.”

I also apologize for erroneously claiming that Senator Steve Daines nourishes himself by lassoing rainbows and drinking their pigment. So it’s a lot of fun. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links!

Montana is one of about 20 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid coverage in compliance with the Affordable Care Act. During the 2013 legislative session, the bill to accept federal funds for expansion failed by one vote, after Mark Jacobson (D-Great Falls) accidentally voted against it when he thought he was voting for it. This year, the original bill to expand Medicaid never made it out of the House Health and Human Services Committee, which is chaired by bulwark of personal responsibility Art Wittich.

Fortunately, Sen. Ed Buttrey (R-Great Falls) developed a compromise bill intended to mollify conservatives in his caucus by ensuring that no one got Medicaid coverage for free. Under SB 405, recipients of expanded Medicaid will have to pay a token premium totaling 2% of their income annually. This expedient heads off the tea party objection that it’s wrong to give people free health insurance. It also costs $11 million. That’s how much we expect a third-party insurer to charge to process payments for a program the federal government administers gratis. We’ve spent $11 million to make sure nobody gets anything for free.

That’s conservatism for dummies, as I explain in this week’s column in the Missoula Independent. I wrote it Monday afternoon, before Wittich’s committee killed SB 405 and made it the object of a crazy rules battle. At one point, 40 Republicans voted to adjourn the entire 2015 legislative session to keep SB 405 from reaching the floor. But Democrats have held Republicans to the “silver bullet” bargain they made at the beginning of the session, despite Speaker Knudsen’s display of bad faith, and the House will vote on Medicaid expansion this afternoon. Probably, team compromise will win, and Montana will finally get $5 billion and health insurance for 7% of its population. And we’ll only have to pay $11 million to satisfy the vocal minority who understand politics from reading chain emails.

Never forget, though, that the conservative wing of the Montana Republican Party insisted on spending millions of dollars to make sure nobody got anything free. Putting theory ahead of pragmatism like that is the opposite of conservatism. Probably, the Montana legislature will do the right thing in spite of itself today. But the people who had to be cajoled into it with inefficiency should not call themselves conservatives.

Montana is extremely popular with people who live in Montana. In terms of the portion of the population wearing shirts advertising where they are at that moment, it is the Creed concert of states. The flip side of this admirable spirit is nativism—the perception that people from California and other, unforgivably non-Montana states are flocking here in droves and, you know, ruining everything. “If I find out someone’s from somewhere far away I am rude to them,” says H.J. Schmidt, who may just be sensitive about his name. “I get annoyed and angry. I feel [like] ‘you were in your place and it got ruined. Now you are coming to my place to ruin it.'”

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I’m sure you remember, but around New Year’s I boldly predicted that 2015 would be the year conservative Republicans in Helena overplayed their hand. I didn’t know what I was talking about, of course, but I happened to be right. Last week, the Montana House passed campaign finance reform and narrowly defeated a “religious freedom” ballot initiative. Meanwhile, the Senate moved incrementally closer to accepting federal funding for Medicaid expansion.

All three of these squeakers came about because moderate Republicans voted with Democrats. I can’t prove it, but I think we have Art Wittich to thank. That’s my contention in this week’s Missoula Independent, where I argue that the Representative from Belgrade has inadvertently encouraged bipartisan cooperation with his relentless attacks on moderates in his own party. The snowball became an avalanche last week, and it all started with the dark money bill.

Wittich said that bill to require disclosure of donors to 501(c)4 organizations was about “hurt feelings and elections.” Either that or it was about the obvious scumbaggery of Western Tradition Partnership, a group whose connection to Wittich is currently the subject of his own political practices indictment. His trial is set for January 2016; if he loses, he will be fined and removed from office. I kind of hope he sticks around for a long time, though. He’s just brazen enough to be likable, and—as last week in Helena suggested—just clever enough to fuck up. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.