Thursday's surprise announcement that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) would be taking his leave of that body and moving to a slightly different part of Washington, to run the Heritage Foundation opened up an unexpected power vacuum in the Senate. And, as the state of South Carolina was involved, it didn't take long before everyone realized that one of the first things to fill that vacuum would be the comic stylings of noted Palmetto State pretend-pundit, Stephen Colbert. (The way it worked was that first, everyone on Twitter made the requisite Alvin Greene jokes, before moving on to talking about the Comedy Central host's certain riff on the matter.)
On Thursday night's iteration of "The Colbert Report," already sort of a big deal as it was the last night of a week-long cross-promotion with the upcoming release of "The Hobbit," Colbert did not waste time bringing up DeMint's decision to quit the Senate and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's (R) responsibility to pick the next senator. In doing so, Colbert immediately made sport of the fact that the media had already spent the day anticipating his satiric response: "I'm not going to sit here and say I should be South Carolina's next senator," Colbert said, "Not when so many other people are saying it for me." (Including us, by the way.)
The upshot? By now several hundred members of Colbert Nation have already deluged Haley's Twitter account with their urgings, using the hashtag #SenatorColbert.
So, there's that! (Not to worry, as you'll see in the video clip, Colbert managed to tie everything back to "The Hobbit," because synergy.)
[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]
Before You Go
