If anyone can make a mockery of the newest campaign finance innovation, the “super PAC,” it’s Stephen Colbert.

Mr. Colbert, the Comedy Central television host, has made jokes at the expense of super PACs for months — forming his own group, soliciting money for it, then running an ad that featured Buddy Roemer, a long-shot candidate who has criticized the Supreme Court decision that allows the existence of the free-spending PACs so long as they do not explicitly coordinate with candidates.

On Thursday night’s “Colbert Report,” Mr. Colbert took it a big step further, handing control of his group to his friend and fellow host Jon Stewart so that he can legally run for president, or at least pretend to. Mr. Colbert, who has comically flirted with — and mocked the possibility of — runs for political office before, said he would form an “exploratory committee for president of the United States of South Carolina.”