Gov, Perdue’s knee-slapper about ‘suspending elections’

posted at 11:03 am on September 29, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Elections ]   

It is with a heavy heart that I break the news, but here goes: Barack Obama is no longer the funniest person alive. That distinction now belongs to North Carolina Democratic Governor Bev Perdue, who brought down the house at a Rotary Club event with the following howler:

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.

For good measure, the governor then hit herself in the face with a pie, which really elicited the guffaws.

The problem is not everyone got the “joke.” North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood didn’t. He told The Daily Caller:

If it was a joke, what was the set-up? What was the punch-line? Where was the pause for laughter? It took them three hours to say it was a ‘joke,’ but when that flopped it became ‘hyperbole.’ We’ll just call it an unconstitutionally bad idea.

I submit that Lockwood lacks a sense of humor. Then again, maybe not. Yesterday Perdue attempted to walk back her characterization of the comments as hyperbole, instead claiming it was “sarcasm” and that her words taken out of context. One can only assume that she will next take a page out of Monty Python’s classic “Dead Parrot Sketch” and insist it was a palindrome.

Two footnotes to the story, one provided by Rush Limbaugh, who remarked, “The next time they tell you how stupid Sarah Palin is or Michele Bachmann, just think back to this day and North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue.”

The other is from Weasel Zippers, which reminds us that “only two months ago Obama ‘joked’ about having the same powers,” telling the National Council of La Raza:

The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.

On second thought, the president’s reputation is secure. He’s still the funniest guy around.

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