Colbert Super PAC Vows Scorched Earth Campaign

What, exactly, is comedian Stephen Colbert doing with his very real super PAC, recently turned over to fellow comedian Jon Stewart and renamed The Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC? He's proving a point and highlighting the absurdity of the Citizens United ruling which allowed that since corporations have the same constitutional rights to free political speech as people and since money equals speech, corporations have the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political speech in the form of election year advertising through super PAC donations, so long as they don't coordinate with any candidate for office.

On Wednesday, The Definitely Not Coordinating with Stephen Colbert Super PAC, under the name, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, released and began airing a new television ad protesting against negative political ads paid for by super PACs. If you're sick of the negative ads unleashed by super PACs supporting Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the new Colbert super PAC ad goes, donate today "and we'll destroy both these guys, and their super PACs… an orgy of pure distortion leaving nothing behind, but the clean campaign we all deserve."

In his television shows each night, Stephen Colbert has been giving the American people a crash course on the buying and selling of elections as allowed by the Citizens United ruling. With legal advice from former Federal Election Commission chairman, Trevor Potter, Colbert demonstrates that, within the current laws, there are no meaningful limits on, and no accountability for, election spending by corporations or super PACs on behalf of candidates or issues that will ultimately benefit them.

In the same way that coal companies can support candidates or issues that will directly benefit coal companies through super PACs, Colbert and Stewart are perfectly within their rights to use a super PAC to help them further their business. Unfortunately for the GOP primary candidates, their business is skewering politicians. That includes pointing out the inherent insanity in Mitt Romney's statement "Corporations are people, my friend" by labeling the former Mass. governor a serial killer for closing down companies while with Bain Capital.

Colbert, on his Comedy Central television show, and the super PAC Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow are urging South Carolina Democrats, Republicans and independents to "Raise Cain," and show their support for Stephen Colbert by voting in the open Republican primary for Herman Cain, whose name remains on the South Carolina ballot despite his having dropped out of the race. With a new national poll from Public Policy Polling showing that Colbert would pull 13 percent of the vote in a three-way race with President Barack Obama and Romney, the results of Saturday's South Carolina GOP primary, might be a very interesting eye-opener for some of the current front-runners.

It is not the actions of Colbert or his super PAC that are ridiculous, but the lax oversight of the Federal Election Commission and the Citizens United ruling which go beyond the limits of propriety.