Campaigning with Colbert: “First to secede, first to succeed!”

Heh. As “Stephen” might say, “You may find that idea appealing because it rhymes.” Here’s an early report from the Colbert Campaign trail from the “Leonardo’s Notebook By Mattheus Mei” blog:

Colbert on the Horseshoe

Stephen Colbert was on the historic Horseshoe less than 20 minutes ago and received the keys to the city from Mayor Bob. What a crowd, I was speaking with Dogwood Dell who was absolutely shocked by the amount of people there. I originally thought about 300 people were there, I think there were considerably more. And boy was there an interesting mix of people. On one side of the podium were the greens who had signs talking about Global Warming Hot, Stephen Colbert Hotter. And then there were the people I knew would be there with this sign.

I must say, there was a level of seriousness about the speech that I wasn’t expecting. He talked about the progress of South Carolina in such a way that it wouldn’t have been uncommon to hear it from any of the other candidates. Granted though his speech was peppered with jokes. Some new saying how wonderful it was that the scientist who will be living in Innovista will at least be there first when their experiments go terribly wrong and how they’ll be the first to mutate. Most though, were not The Carolina peaches bit. I think though probably one of the most memorable quotes if you will is one that he said he was copyrighting about South Carolina’s past and future. “In the 19th century South Carolina was the first to secede, in the 21st century South Carolina will be the first to succeed. First to secede, first to succeed!”

I’m always a bit amused by the surprise people evince when there are big crowds for a Stephen Colbert event, but it’s rather cute.

And so begins Stephen’s march to the White House (of South Carolina) . . .

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UPDATE: The pics in this post, and this one, from this morning’s event are also cracking me up a little; it looks . . . a lot like an actual rally.

EDIT:
There are more pics at the colbert_report LJ group, courtesy of LJ user my_lastadvice.