Day: September 2, 2010

Verbatim

Buck Banks

“And if I decide to run for president, I won’t know what the answer is, either. But I will know this: if I run for President, what you see is what you get, and I am from Mississippi, I do have a Southern accent. I was a lobbyist and a pretty damned good one. … And I will tell you this — the next president of the United States on January 21, 2013 — is going to start lobbying. He’s going to be lobbying Congress, he’s going to be lobbying other countries. He’s going to be lobbying the business community. He’s going to be lobbying the labor unions, the governors, because that’s what Presidents do, and I feel like it’s an advantage for me to have the chance to do that.

— Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), addressing how he’ll handle questions about his former profession if he decides to run for president in 2012, according to GOP 12.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R): ‘We Have Did What Was Right for Arizona’

Jon Ponder

New York Times:

[It] was 13 seconds or so of silence that is being talked about more than anything else.

During her opening statement, Ms. Brewer began by defending her stewardship: “I have, uh, done so much and I just cannot believe that we have changed everything since I have become your governor in the last 600 days. Arizona has been brought back from its abyss. We have cut the budget. We have balanced the budget and we are moving forward. We have done everything we could possibly do.”

At that point, she stared down at the papers in front of her, clutched her hands together, laughed nervously but struggled to come up with anything more to say. It was painful to watch.

Finally, though, she recovered and said: “We have did what was right for Arizona.”