Blatant Reality

Yes, today marks the first annual Stephen Colbert Day in South Carolina. Colbert was in town to accept the key to the city of Columbia and prove to everyone that his run for candidacy wasn’t a joke. For those of you who are unaware, Stephen Colbert is a comedian who is the host of the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. About a week and a half ago, Colbert announced his intentions to run for President, and the fact that he will only be running in South Carolina.

In his roughly ten minute long speech, Colbert made several campaign promises such as, if elected president, he will “crush Georgia” and also Tennessee “for good measure.” I suspect that the Tennessee part was added just to assuage our anger for our previous day’s loss against the Volunteers. As expected, there wasn’t any of the typical campaigning substance you would hear from the other top candidates. Nevertheless, he drew a surprisingly large crowd for it being 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning. I can guarantee that a majority of students attending probably haven’t seen 9 a.m. in the past two month of school and definitely not on Sunday.

After his announcement of candidacy, Colbert originally wanted to run as both a Republican and Democrat candidate but, after discovering the cost of $25,000 to be considered a Republican candidate in South Carolina, the odds are he will only appear on the Democrat’s ticket. To run as a Democrat, you can waive the fee with a petition, a big advantage that allows for a grassroots movement to form without much help from Colbert. However, Colbert may encounter some trouble with the Feds concerning his campaign sponsors (a.k.a Doritos) if he actually does run.

What is most surprising about Stephen Colbert’s candidacy is the amount of support he has already received. Only after one week, he was already tied in South Carolina with Joe Biden in the polls. Also, a group on Facebook named “1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert” has already received, at the time of this posting, 1,137,003 members. This might not seem that significant other than the fact that this is more than the Obama group with a similar name that has been around for 9 months. With primaries still a little over 2 months away, it will be interesting to see how much more support Colbert can gain.

It seems that with each passing month, more and more twists are being added to what is quickly turning into a very interesting election. And the best news is, we are still only in the primaries! Who knows what kind of madness we will witness in the months to come.

UPDATE: I posted the video I took of the last half of the Colbert’s press conference here on YouTube.