We’ll still probably be greatly outspent by the left since they have a large number of fat-cats who will donate to 527s, but we’re certainly not going into the fall campaign unarmed:
WASHINGTON – John McCain and the Republican National Committee started August with a hefty $96 million, financially flush and strongly positioned to compete with prolific fundraiser Barack Obama and (his) Democrats.
Republicans have been trying to even out the financial playing field after trailing Democrats in overall fundraising for most of the election cycle.
McCain has been a subpar fundraiser and has lagged the much-more adept Obama in monthly campaign tallies. But the RNC, with big-draw President Bush helping, has trounced its Democratic counterpart in collections. That has helped McCain and the GOP stay competitive financially with Obama and the Democratic National Committee.
The July numbers reflect how far McCain and the Republicans have come.
McCain raised $27 million in July, his largest one-month fundraising haul since clinching the GOP presidential nomination, and had $21 million available to spend, while the RNC brought in nearly $26 million, and had $75 million on hand to compete with the Democrats.
Money doesn’t win elections (just ask Hillary, who once had vastly more funds than Obama), but the fact that the GOP has managed, in this allegedly massively anti-GOP year, to have nearly $100 million ready for the fall campaign shows that, just perhaps, support for the GOP isn’t quite as anemic as the punditry and conventional wisdom claims. I think that a lot of illusions will be cleared away in November, on both sides (though I suspect that the left is in for a far ruder awakening than the right is).
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