State of the State Re-Hash

The dust has almost settled on Sanford’s State of the State address, and the blogosphere has spoken as loudly and clearly as Senator John Land doing a Foghorn Leghorn impersonation. Or was that an imchickenation? Ah seh ah seh I just don’t know.

The least surprising response was from the Crunchy Republican, who thought it was perfection on a podium. She said, “With Governor Sanford, there is no put-on glitz or oratorical grandstanding.” Sanford’s the king of grandstanding, but Crunchy’s radically right on this – oratorically, he was definitely not showboating and/or demonstrating competence.

I was kind of shocked that The Body Politic was so critical of Sanford in his thinly-veiled plea to be hired as the Governor’s communications director. This was the funniest post Joshua has offered up in a long time: “Even more tedious was the dropping of around 40 legislators’ names; this wasn’t an Oscar acceptance speech.” As Sanford discussed for the fourth straight year what will probably become his legacy -- DMV wait times -- I too was wondering about Oscar’s acceptance speech.

Laurin’s post on John Land’s pre-emptively taped response caused some commenters to cry “fowl,” but ah seh I don’t see anything wrong with it. Maybe I've been watching too many detective shows, but I actually could easily tell it was pre-recorded. Major clues were the ambient light, the lack of background noise, and the fact that John Land was still awake at 8PM. Especially after that speech.

Here are Gervais' picks for the five best quotes from the State of the State address:

"Let’s not go there right now, Gilda." It’s good to see Sanford has a nice rapport with Rep. Cobb-Hunter, but “don’t go there”? That’s not even a “black” quote anymore, it’s so old. At least he didn’t tell her to “talk to the hand, girlfriend” or give her “three snaps in a Z formation.”

“I was thinking of fishing with Chip.” When your Governor loses his train of thought during the State of the State address because he’s thinking about being on a boat with his man friend, something’s wrong.

“On spending, we have got to come up with some alternative to having me try to catch-up with Governor Campbell’s record of 277 budget vetoes.” Campbell never had a GOP majority in either chamber, much less both. Sanford’s flattering himself by even making a slight comparison… one of Campbell’s boogers could recruit more jobs than the current administration has.

"Rosa Parks this, Rosa Parks that." Sanford challenged legislators to “courageously defy the status quo” like Rosa Parks did. Of course, when it was time to lower flags in Parks’ honor like the 49 other state governors, Sanford’s gubernatesticles were nowhere to be found.

"It means someone is loading up a U-haul rental trailer and leaving Michigan because they think South Carolina represents greater opportunity. In the short run, that lowers Michigan ’s unemployment rate and raises ours..." Bullshit masterpieces like this deserve their own section in the Louvre Museum. Preferring to have at least one foot firmly planted in reality, I can’t participate in the fiction that our unemployment is due to droves of bright-eyed, U-haul-driving Michiganders who see South Carolina as a land of opportunity. According to the FDIC, our job growth is third from last in the nation, just like our unemployment rate. Even though I’m allergic to Spanish moss, I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and say job growth is the real problem.

Happy Birthday, Mom! Love you!