Rick Scott dropped the "elect" from his title this week, becoming the 45th governor of Florida and immediately getting to work, as he promised to do during his campaign – repeatedly.

His first order of business after taking the oath of office was to deliver an inaugural address, however haltingly. Scott stumbled over several of his lines, but he used his speech to make the case for a business, business and more business agenda, even borrowing a phrase from former President George W. Bush – with a slight twist.

"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world,” Bush said of three nations -- North Korea, Iraq and Iran -- in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

"Three forces reduce that chance for success," Scott said this week. "Taxation, regulation and litigation. Those three form the axis of unemployment."

Scott took the side of those looking for work in making the case for getting to work.

“This morning more than a million Floridians got out of bed and faced another day of unemployment," Scott said. "For months they've searched for work. They fill out applications. They beg for interviews. They face rejection after rejection. Many people who once earned a good living on a construction site -- when the economy stalled, building stopped -- found themselves with skills, but no degree and absolutely no job.”

That’s why “job creation is an absolute mission," Scott said near the top of a roughly 20-minute speech in which he used the word "jobs" 20 times. At one point, Scott looked up from his prepared remarks and asked roughly 4,000 attendees “can you tell I’m focused on jobs?”

The crowd responded favorably for the most part, though Scott’s message was not well-received by everyone in attendance. A heckler interrupted Scott at one point, shouting "Criminal! You are not Christian! You're a heathen!"

But even there, it all came back to employment. "Get a job!,” someone in the crowd responded, though Scott himself did not take the bait.

Members of the GOP in the Legislature loved Scott’s speech, which was music to their ears after a year of having a Republican-turned-independent who governed at times like he was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

"His comments on … making sure that we create a better environment to create jobs in Florida was probably what stuck out the most," said Rep. Will Weatherford, who is expected to be speaker of the House during the second half of Scott's tenure. "Frankly, that's what the Legislature's been talking about and that's what we'll be focusing on as well."

Weatherford was even willing to overlook the fact that the audience for Scott's first official remarks as governor included many of the lobbyists he railed against during his populist campaign. In fact, many of them had the best seats in the House, right in front of the podium. But Weatherford said those who share Scott's goals aren't the "special interests" the former health-care executive ran against.

"If what you mean by special interests is tax cuts and deregulating industries that have been far too overregulated for far too long, if it means helping out small businesses, if it means creating a 21st century education system and putting free markets into our health care, than I'm OK with those special interests," Weatherford said.

Democrats were less charitable after the speech, which was filled with red-meat rhetoric aimed squarely at them, or whatever is left of them after last year’s disastrous-for-the-Dems election.

"I think he had a golden opportunity to bring everybody together and start from a fresh page and say 'look, these are my goals, but today we are one Florida.' I think we missed that a little bit," said Rep. Alan Williams, D-Tallahassee, one of the few Democratic lawmakers who actually attended the inauguration ceremony.

MILLION AIR (AND A MILLION MILES)

One of the first things Scott did as governor was ground two state airplanes by putting them up for sale. That’s easy for him to do, of course, because he has his own jet, which was used this week to take him around the state.