Stephen Colbert announced his latest political stunt on his show The Colbert Report on Thursday night, that he was forming an exploratory committee ahead of a possible run for president of what he jokingly described as "the United States of South Carolina."
Barry Popik at RedState was horrified at the concept of a joke GOP candidacy, recalling the fiasco of Colbert's congressional testimony: “Colbert has been ripping into Republicans lately. If there has been a single joke about Barack Obama or Michelle Obama, maybe I missed it. Running in the Republican primary would be the last step of anti-conservative bias. Mr. Colbert, you can be a funny guy. But there are limits that you don’t want to cross, for your sake and for this country’s.”
The stunt is already part of a strategy with NBC to protest Super PACs, since NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams is promoting Colbert’s interview with Ted Koppel.
"A PAC can only take so much money, it can only spend so much money, and I wanted to spend unlimited amounts of money and receive, more importantly, unlimited amounts of money, and so my lawyer told me all I had to do was add a cover letter that said that I intend this to be a Super PAC and it was a Super PAC," Colbert told Koppel.
When asked how much money his Super PAC had raised, Colbert said, "The fun thing about that is I don't have to tell you....My major donor is none of your --- damn business."
Popik protested the whole South Carolina schtick:
Now, let me count the ways how this can (and will) go wrong.
Who can forget when Colbert testified before Congress in the Stephen Colbert Comedy Central character. Congress may be a joke, but he wasted people’s time. Colbert tried to get serious during the testimony, but that’s a bit too late.
Colbert has a highly successful television show. Will he give that up for a few months? Probably not.
Does Colbert even have a message? Judging from his PAC, I’d say the answer is “no.”
And if he does get 1/6th of debate time, he’ll just make a fool of himself. It’s very, very different to tell jokes without a script, in a limited time period, and in a situation where the snark is not welcome.
