February Hauls

by shamanic

Yeah, yeah, the horse race stuff is crap and the money race stuff is hardly more inspiring, but McCain raised $12M in February.

Hillary Clinton, who is not at all seen as the favorite at this point, raised $35M.

Barack Obama, who is widely seen as the favorite, but still faces a split decision from his party, raised "considerably more" than $35M.

In other words, the party that is busy coalescing around a single candidate, raised $12M for its nominee. And the divided party, the one that lives in permanent disarray, raised "considerably more" than $70M for the candidates who are currently battling to become its nominee.

None of the existing narratives really do justice to the campaign this year. Yeah, yeah, the horse race stuff is crap, but this election is the most exciting political race of my lifetime. After all these years of watching, it finally really feels worth it.

Straight Talk Express Doesn't Stop At FEC Station

By Cernig

John McCain has given us a massive hint about how likely he would be to feel constrained by existing legislation if he were President. Not at all. TPM reports that he's about to break the law by unilaterally opting out of his public finance deal and overspending - and that his basic attitude to the FEC is "what are you going to do about it, huh?"

So the McCain campaign sent the Federal Election Commission a letter (pdf) earlier this month saying that he was opting out. But there's a problem. And FEC Chairman David Mason, a Republican, made it plain in his letter (pdf) yesterday: McCain can't tell the FEC that he's out of the system. He can only ask.

And the FEC, which normally has six commissioners, can't give him an answer until it has a quorum of four commissioners. It currently only has two. That's because the Senate has been deadlocked over four nominees; Democrats insist on a separate confirmation vote for vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky, and Republicans insist on a single vote for all nominees.

The second issue has to do with McCain's tricky loan and whether the FEC will conclude that it locked him into the system. But for now, that's really ancillary to the first issue.

It is a serious issue. As the Post reports, "Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison."

It's really unclear as to what might happen next. McCain's lawyer says he's out of the system and that's that. It's unclear if they'll respond to Mason's letter. And it's unclear if the FEC can do anything or be forced to do anything, without the necessary quorum. It's literally an unprecedented situation.

Meanwhile, across the pond, Britain's biggest conservo-blogger insider Iain Dale is speculating about a sudden appearance of Florida's Charlie Crist as party saviour should the blonde lobbyist scandal unravel McCain's candidacy. I imagine there would also be considerable pressure from the GOP's men-in-back-rooms to withdraw should McCain end up under a campaign finance bus. Watch how fast the Right blogosphere would un-unify itself again from the McCain bandwagon in such an eventuality.

Fred does manage to outraise McCain

by shamanic

Going forward, we will have a new term in politics for media-generated phenomena with incredibly shallow support: a Fred.

According to preliminary figures put out by the NYT, Thompson managed to raise a whopping $8 million this quarter. I don't need to remind you that he was heralded as the savior of the GOP and pushed to run from nearly all quarter of dissatisfied conservatism.

$8 million. They're reporting that John McCain, who, if you'll recall, was reportedly DOA as candidates go as recently as a month ago, pulled $5 million.

If the difference between dead and savior is $3 million, then the GOP is more faith-based than I thought. Obama and Clinton both packed up something in the neighborhood of $20 million. Good luck, eventual GOP nominee.