GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is raising money today from Americans in London, hoping to add to his already fat campaign account.Romney is reporting today that he raised $18.25 million in the second fundraising quarter and has $12.6 million in the bank.
The former Massachusetts governor, who is ahead in Gallup and other national polls, is far outpacing all of his GOP rivals in the race for campaign cash. Much of his haul came from a one-day "call-a-thon."
This on top of his sizable personal resources make Mitt the nominee-apparent in my book. There's really almost no point to holding the primaries, except for two things: one, to watch Michele Bachmann self-destruct and two, to keep an eye out to see how enthusiastic Teabaggers are to vote for Romney.
My guess is the turnout after Iowa, should Mitt win handily, will wither away. If Bachmann can somehow cobble together an insurgent campaign, while she will still lose, at least it will make for a fun Spring 2012.
If you haven't guessed by now, this is the week campaigns must report their second quarter numbers. There are no real surprises on the Republican side of the race: Romney is running up his totals, Newt Gingrich is finding out just how unliked he really is, Ron Paul is finding out that cheap-ass...I mean, no-tax...Teabaggers are cheap, and the rest are, well, putting lipstick on a pig.
To coin a phrase.
Bachmann does not have to report since she entered the race so late in the quarter, and President Obama has not released his final tally yet, but my recollection from the solicitations I received indicate that he was running ahead of his stated goals, and I suspect he will return a surprising total, on a par with Romney and perhaps well in excess of his.
In truth, a popinjay politician who surrounds himself with yes-men and toadies, like Newt and Bachmann, learns a harsh truth each quarter: he (or she) is not universally loved by so many people who throw money at candidates like Elvis got panties.
This is one of the joys of American politics. A person can be so removed from reality and yet suffer such indignities as, first, having to beg for money and then, having to take "no" for an answer without recourse.
This dynamic goes a long way to understanding why we're so fucked up. It certainly does not help that the SCOTUS saw fit to scrape away any pretense of fairness in campaign financing by allowing corporations to dump unlimited amounts of the trillions they have in bank accounts in favor of or against any candidate they see fit to pick on.
Perhaps one day, the concretization of idiocy that this nation has undergone under Republicanism will crack, shatter, and the tree of liberty will finally grown once more. They've paved paradise and put up a parking lot.