Thursday, November 1, 2007

Colbert’s Facebook group obliterates Obama numbers

Proving that people who aren’t “pretending” to be politicians have less political validity than actors… Stephen Colbert’s Presidential campaign group on FaceBook, 1,000,000 Strong For Stephen T Colbert has, in less than 10 days, outdone Obama’s (1,000,000 Strong) group, which took more than 9 months to get 381,000 members.

Furthermore, the site adds, “it has taken the “Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)” more than 8 months to get over 488,000 members. We beat this within 6 days!”

Colbert will easily have 1 million before the 10th day and if that is any indication of his poll power, he’s a shoe-in for the GOP nomination. But it’s not in the can yet… as Politico reports, his campaign could cause his network a pile of legal trouble.

If he continues moving toward a presidential campaign, particularly if he, or Comedy Central, keeps spending money exploring and promoting by hyping it on his nightly half-hour news parody show, he could get himself and his network in trouble for violating election laws, including those barring corporate campaign contributions.

“You don’t get a different set of rules because you’re running as a joke,” said Marc Elias, a leading Washington election lawyer who represents Democratic candidates.

“You may get a different set of rules because it’s a joke and you’re not really running,” said Elias, who stressed he was not speaking for any client. “But if it isn’t a joke, then there may be any number of issues.”

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