Morning Clip

Last night on “The Colbert Report,” Stephen Colbert checked in with the Republican candidates for president and took stock of the nominating contest. The verdict: It’s been a weird few days for the Republican Party, huh? Mitt Romney, who looked like the inevitable nominee after a pair of victories, found out on Thursday that he never actually won the Iowa caucuses. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich, the man best positioned to seize the momentum and defeat Romney in tomorrow’s South Carolina primary, faces some hash allegations from his second wife, Marianne. What else? Rick Perry dropped out of the race, and proceeded to endorse Gingrich anyway. And Rick Santorum said something weird about couches.

Rarely does a piece of legislation take over the national dialogue the way the Stop Online Piracy Act did yesterday; but that’s what happens when Wikipedia shuts down in protest. What remains puzzling, though, even after a day of widespread virtual protests, is how the lawmakers who originally supported SOPA failed to gauge public sentiment so spectacularly. That’s where Jon Stewart came in and illuminated matters on “The Daily Show” last night, with one particularly valuable insight: The people responsible for SOPA — the members of the congressional subcommittee who gave the legislation their seal of approval — have no idea how the Internet actually works.

The grand experiment launched late last week continues: Stephen Colbert is exploring a run for president, while Jon Stewart manages Colbert’s former super PAC — and enthusiastically smears the candidate’s would-be Republican primary rivals in the process. The problem with managing a PAC in support of your business partner’s campaign, however, is that not a whole lot of it feels legal. (Even if it almost certainly is.) That’s why Stewart and Colbert powwowed with their lawyer on “The Daily Show” last night — just to make sure their “good”-faith efforts at non-coordination were still strictly within the bounds of the law.

This past Thursday, Stephen Colbert handed over control of his much-publicized super PAC to Jon Stewart in order to explore a run for the Republican nomination. Over the weekend, the PAC began showing a campaign ad in South Carolina that equates Mitt Romney with a serial killer, based on his work at Bain Capital. Did Colbert go too far? Well, of course not, because, as he pointed out on his show last night, election law prohibits him from coordinating with the PAC. So, clearly, Colbert (like all the rest of the candidates who just happen to have the support of super PAC money) remains helpless to stop his former organization from continuing to air its ads about “Mitt the Ripper.” Totally helpless. Right?

What to do if you’re Stephen Colbert? The “Report” host is surging in Republican primary polls (despite not being an actual candidate) and the temptation to explore a run for president grows larger by the day. The problem, however, is that candidates are prohibited by federal election law from operating a super PAC, which Colbert very publicly does.