Bigwigs at The Price Is Right are wondering if maybe they’ve made a mistake by hiring rotund comic Drew Carey to fill the legendary Bob Barker’s shoes. And not because Carey isn’t doing a fine job of navigating the likes of Plinko. No, what’s got their proverbial Big Wheel in a tizzy is the fact that Carey has gone out of his way to tout his political beliefs by forging a partnership with the libertarian Reason magazine.

“We didn’t expect him to become political,” one CBS-TV insider admitted to Big Head DC. “We sure hope it doesn’t hurt the show’s ratings.”

In contrast to Barker, whose most visible political action over the decades was to support controlling the pet population, Carey made a splash in Washington over the weekend on the arm of Reason editor Nick Gillespie (shown at right). Carey is expected to contribute regularly to the magazine’s Web site, espousing his own conservative viewpoints.

Carey seems to know he’s treading dangerous waters — for a game show host, that is. “Just because I make fun of Democrats doesn’t make me a Republican,” the comic was quoted as saying by the Washington Post. “I picked up an issue of [its] magazine and agreed with every word in it. You don’t know what you are sometimes until someone puts a name to it.”

It’s widely known that his bosses at the Price is Right didn’t choose Rosie O’Donnell for the host role because of her liberal views. Interestingly, Carey kept his own views in the closet until the contract was dry.

Earlier: Nick Gillespie’s a Cosmo Girl