Conservative Raleigh talk show host Bill LuMaye interviewed House Speaker Thom Tillis this morning on his show and, to his credit, gave Tillis a pretty hard time (in his own inimitable and wacky way) about providing severance pay-offs to his staffers (including his chief of staff and roommate) who resigned as a result of their romantic relationships with lobbyists.

If you listen to the spot – which runs about seven and half minutes, you’ll hear Tillis sound an awful lot like Ralph Kramden from the old “Honeymooners” TV show doing his best to come up with something to say other than “homina, homina, homina.”

According to Tillis, he paid off Charles Thomas and Amy Hobbs because if he had fired them, they would have then “qualified for 99 weeks of unemployment [insurance].”

Say what? No wonder Tillis wants to ruin the state unemployment insurance system; he doesn’t understand how it works. The basic standard of the law is that people fired for cause/malfeasance in the workplace are NOT eligible for unemployment benefits. Not to mention the fact that they can’t claim it if they’ve become re-employed. Thomas had already field the papers to start a new “consulting” business even before he left the Speaker’s office.

Add to this the fact that Tillis later refers to the unemployment insurance system as “workmen’s compensation” AND the fact that Tillis claims to talk to Pat McCrory “every day” (McCrory will love that) and it all totals up to another boffo public performance for the Speaker.

You can listen to the entire LuMaye interview by clicking here.