The Illegal campaign of Stephen T. Colbert

So, as many people may know Stephen Colbert –political satirist extraordinaire- has declared that he is seeing the office of the President of the United States of America. The catch is, he is only running as the favorite son in South Carolina, as a democrat… and a republican. And Colbert’s support is growing in record numbers. The Facebook site 1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert has taken a little less than ten days to go from ten thousand members to 1.1 million members. The group adds on average seven new people every refresh. In contrast, it has taken 1 million strong for Obama nine months to get to three hundred thousand and 1 million strong against Hillary Clinton stands at five hundred thousand. In a recent poll, Colbert is at two percent which puts him ahead of democrat candidates Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel and he find himself right behind Joe Biden. As a Republican, Colbert does not even make a tiny splash. He still finds himself even behind long shot candidates like Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo As an independent, Colbert polls at 13% in a Giuliani/Clinton race and 12% if Thompson was the GOP candidate. Based off age Colbert takes 28-31% of the 18-29 voter group. Colbert overall is gaining an average of 10% a week right now, which could make him the front runner after Thanksgiving. Now I think it is pretty self-evident that a Colbert Presidency is the best thing for America right now, (Colbert/Romney is my choice) but Colbert has gotten himself into a mountain of legal trouble surrounding his campaign. And he’s only been doing it for two weeks!

The problems with Colbert’s campaign stem from the way he is trying to get money. In order to get on the ballot as a Republican in the state of South Carolina, you need to $35,000. As a democrat you need $2,500, or three thousand signatures to get on the ballot. (Colbert did attempt to have people download the petition to get signatures, however that was an illegal move as well). In order to get the money, Colbert enlisted the help of Doritos to sponsor his campaign. That is illegal too, Doritos can only sponsor coverage of the campaign, but where is that distinction drawn between covering a campaign and campaigning:

If his campaign plays out the way he’s indicated that it will, Comedy Central and Colbert’s sponsor, Doritos, could be violating federal laws that bar corporations from backing political campaigns, election law experts say.

“How serious can you get about running as a joke?” said Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign finances. “The Federal Election Commission doesn’t have a great sense of humor.”
But no precedent exists for a television network promoting and fostering a candidacy of one of its own talk-show hosts, said Lawrence M. Noble, a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission. And comedian Pat Paulsen’s 1968 candidacy predated current campaign finance regulations.

“The real problem comes in the fact that he actually has his own show, talking about his campaign, paid for by a network,” Noble said. “These are the kind of things on slow days you’d debate until the late afternoon at the FEC, but there are serious questions that come up. In theory, he could end up having some campaign finance problems.”

Isn’t it so great that we have such a lack of true leadership that we have to look to fake leadership?

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