Weigel

The Romney-Obama Fundraising Gap: $35 Million

The Romney campaign announces one of the best single-month money hauls in presidential campaign history: $106.1 million for Romney for President, the Republican National Committee, and the Romney Victory fund that the two organizations share.

The Obama campaign, with the same triparite fundraising set-up, announcing $71 million in June, and doing it with the email equivalent of a hangdog expression: “We’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

Mostly bad! Four Junes ago, when John McCain was the Republican nominee-to-be, he and the RNC raised only $48 million. Obama and the DNC? $74 million. So they’re actually $3 million down from this time in the last campaign, and the Republicans are doubling that performance.

What explains it? McCain had a far more fractious relationship with the Republican base – and its donor bases – than Romney ever had. Remember, in 2008 Romney was the “conservative” candidate who courted all the right leaders and tried to save marriage in Massachusetts. McCain was the guy who’d voted against the Bush tax cuts, and passed campaign finance reform. Romney, by contrast, approaches high-dollar fundraising with something approaching glee.