Colbert ramps up Twitter pressure on SC Gov. Haley in Senate push

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Stephen Colbert urged his followers on Monday to keep using Twitter to badger South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) into appointing him to the U.S. Senate, using the hashtag #spottedsalamander in a riposte to Haley’s own social-media jibe.

While Haley pointed out earlier in the day on her Facebook page that Colbert couldn’t name milk as the state drink when she appeared on the show in April, he acknowledged, the governor didn’t know that the salamander was the state amphibian.

“You know the state dish, governor? It’s revenge,” Colbert said. “Best served cold with a side of salamander milk.”

But even if Haley tried to pooh-pooh his budding candidacy, he noted, Public Policy Polling revealed that a survey of state voters had listed Colbert as their top choice to replace outgoing Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), with 20 percent of respondents favoring him.

“Twenty percent — that’s like half,” he said.

Colbert also crowed over the momentum his campaign had garnered since first urging his fans to begin lobbying Haley, with fans setting up both a Twitter account and a website where people could sign a petition to “draft” him for DeMint’s seat and some news pundits speaking up in favor of the idea, with NBC’s Willie Geist saying on The Today Show that the Colbert Report host is “an absolute rock star” in his native state.

However, NBC News posited that the thought of Colbert as a senator wasn’t “as crazy” as having DeMint in that position, a description Colbert challenged.

“I am at least as crazy as Jim DeMint,” he insisted. “He wanted to ban gay teachers from the classroom; I want to ban teachers from the classroom. With their knowledge agenda — I say let the free market decide what the atomic weight of carbon is.”

Watch Colbert’s latest campaign push, aired Monday on Comedy Central, below.