Money Doesn't Matter Until It's All We Have To Report On

As my esteemed colleague Sean pointed out in his "Records" blog, Barack Obama was the big story of the recent quarterly reports on fundraising for still young Presidential Campaigns. Hillary raised the most, of course, and Edwards is "falling behind," despite raising a record $14 million dollars (or it would have been a record has it stood alone this cycle). Richardson looks like the most likely candidate to be "On Fourth" with $7 million (about how much Kerry raised in his first quarter in 2003), with Dodd and Biden running strong at $5 million and $4 million, respectively.

The Republican side is more telling to me, however. Romney 4.0 raised $21 million, Giuliani $15 million, and McCain $12.5 million and the rest scattered. Poor Senator Brownback and Governor Miuke Huckabee raised dismally small amounts of money (only about $500,000 for Huckabee), who seem to be the closest to the true Republican views of most primary voters.

Pundits have been talking about how this could be the downfall of McCain, and how he is now out of the top tier. What? $12.5 million seems pretty good to me, and this is a hard-driving candidate, to be sure. He was once considered the shoo-in, and he still has good friends here in New Hampshire. His war support is dragging him down, but he still has many, many, many things going for him.

Romney? I call him Romney 4.0 because he has run on so many different positions in the past (some more liberal than Ted Kennedy's, to use the '94 Massachusetts senate race as an example) that this "version" of him running for president is just that, a version. He calls himself a "lifelong hunter," but he's only been twice; once when he was a little boy (eleven, I believe) and once this past summer. He's also a "Lifelong" member of the NRA, which he joined last August. He also doesn't have exactly the kind of experience that Republican primary voters are looking for. P.J. O'Rourke, a Republican commentator and comedian (who has said he wanted to like Romney), described it well when he said that Romney running for President as a Republican was akin to someone running for Pope with credentials as chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Massachusetts, that bluest of blue states, has not proven to be a good stepping stone for anyone to the Presidency, Democrat or Republican. And it may just be a little bit suspicious to voters that in the past year or so, Romney has gone from pro-choice to pro-life, turned against gay marriage, and gone hard to the right on many other issues. All this after he does not need to win re-election in Massachusetts. Hmmmm.....

If Romney 4.0 gets the support of the general Republican population, and Romney 4.6 proceeds to win the general election, who is to say what Romney 5.0 will do once in office? Before that happens though, Republicans could get a taste of their own "flip-flopping" remarks in the general election.

McCain is a true campaign-finance reformer, and he does not like to raise money. He genuinely thinks it should be out of the system. Let's not punish him for not getting as cozy with the special interests as Romney 4.0 or Giuliani. He deserves votes for his integrity.

Thank you for reading.