During Wednesday night’s broadcast of The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart took aim at the multiple Republican responses to this year’s State of the Union address. He poked fun at the insane number of Tea Party lawmakers who decided to offer up their own rebuttals, specifically highlighting Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who shot videos of their own that competed with the official GOP response as well as the one arranged by the Tea Party.
Stewart decided to run through the responses in order to pick this year’s winner of the ‘Implody,’ an award given annually to the Republican who provides the worst speech. After highlighting past winners such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), he focused on this year’s nominees. First up, he reviewed the performance from this year’s official GOP response giver, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA). A clip of Ernst’s already infamous “bread bags” anecdote was played, followed by Stewart referring to her as Siri. Countering one reporter’s claim that Ernst was supposed to humanize the party with her speech, Stewart mimed a robot saying “mission accomplished.”
Moving on from Ernst’s speech, Stewart was shocked that there was an official Tea Party response considering Ernst is a “Tea Party darling.” The Daily Show host then played a clip of Rep. Curt Clawson (R-FL) giving his folksy rebuttal, focusing on his attempt to portray himself as someone who knows about diversity due to his college basketball career. Stewart figured that was it from the Tea Party. However, there was still more to come, as Paul delivered his response on his own YouTube channel.
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A clip was aired of Paul complaining about “liberal elites” not wanting to understand small-town Americans but instead looking to “impose their wills” on them. This remark completely irritated Stewart and he called out Paul on his blatant hypocrisy when it comes to calling others “elite.”
“‘Liberal elites’? You’re a doctor and a senator, with a 12-term congressman father and a first name synonymous with a Russian novelist. That’s pretty f*cking elite. So I guess the smear here is ‘liberal.'”
After shredding Paul, Stewart once again figured we were done with the Tea Party responses. However, there was still the rebuttal shot by another potential 2016 Presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The host exclaimed, “How many f*cking people are at this tea party?!?!” This was followed by a clip of Cruz screwing up his speech and asking to start over. Stewart then awarded the Implody to Cruz for airing a what looked like a “ransom video, or the part of the porno everyone fast forwards through.”
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Comedy Central:
Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).
