I’m skeptical, especially if you count his Super PAC as part of his campaign. (And who doesn’t?) But the basic logic makes sense. If you depend heavily on a small-ish base of wealthy donors who are capped by law on how much they can give, then you’d better win early to grow that base before they’re all tapped out. If Santorum bumps him off in Michigan and Romney underperforms on Super Tuesday, it suddenly gets much harder for Mitt to lure big money with the promise of access to the eventual nominee.
Romney has proved unable to tap into the emotion-drived small-dollar contributions that helped power Barack Obama in 2008, and which fueled even his more Establishment rival, Hillary Clinton, this time four years ago when she too began to run out of big donors. The result: Republican fundraisers say that despite his success so far, they think Romney is fast approaching a wall, and that he will likely be forced to pay for the campaign out of his own deep pockets…
Over 82 percent of Romney’s haul from individuals in 2011 came in donations greater than $1000 —which doesn’t even include the larger donations to the SuperPAC that supports him, Restore Our Future. And as Rick Santorum stays in the game with a growing pool of small donors — to whom he can return for another $20 or $100 when the millions they’ve given him runs out — Romney’s campaign has launched an intense, late scramble for the cash to fend off his conservative challenger…
Three Republicans who work closely with Romney’s bundlers said they had begun to shift their focus away from the presidential campaign entirely.
“All the low-hanging fruit has been picked,” said a top New York finance industry donor and fundraiser who is currently neutral in the race and described Romney as “a Republican John Kerry running Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
Follow the link for six different reasons why he’s having trouble. The obligatory caveat: Stories like this are self-fulfilling prophesies insofar as the worse the news gets for Romney, the more skittish his donors are likely to become about ponying up. It’d be easy for mischievous Republicans inclined towards Santorum or Gingrich to plant an extra seed of doubt in the media by pushing an angle like this — which is not to say that’s what’s going on here, but merely that it’s possibility. The big wrinkle in the narrative is that Romney’s donors can, of course, give unlimited amounts to his Super PAC, which is doing most of the heavy lifting for him anyway.
You can only be so mediocre for so long before people start seeing that the investment they are making is not going to pay off. Romney needed to close this deal early, he knew it, his team knew it, most insiders knew it. He spent tons of money trying to convince Republicans and Conservatives he was the man and the results were at best a wash, and this was just the Republican primary. He is like the new Coke of the 90’s. The executives of Coca Cola thought for sure they had a winner. Invested a huge wad of cash promoting it but couldn’t convince anyone it was an improvement. With Coca Cola drinkers the new Coke just didn’t pass the taste test. Romney just doesn’t taste right to Conservatives. The thing with Romney is that his aftertaste preceded the first swig.
CURT
hi,
you said something very important ,that is the lack of passion in his speech,
but SANTORUM SHOWED HIS PASSION, HE SHOWED GENUINE ANGER BUT WITHOUT HATE,
WHILE ROMNEY showed anger mix with arrogance and hate toward NEWT GINGRICH,
AS HE WAS TRYING TO BURY HIM, LIKE A HATEFUL PERSON WOULD DO, and when he stop,
the people saw it while NEWT TOOK A PAUSE IN THE SAME TIME. and they thought they had him down,
but now NEWT IS COMING BACK TO MEET THE CHALLENGE AGAIN. AND THE INSULTS ARE NO MORE WORKING,
BYE
I’m guessing that even with him on the downswing and Santorum rising, Romney is still pulling in more money. Just not the vast amounts he would need to reproduce his Florida victory in ten more states.
Anyway, he could always pony up some of his own fortune. But I don’t think he wants to. Wonder whether he’ll stay in if he loses Michigan; that was always supposed to be a safe win for him but now it’s looking like it’s in play.
Is Romney running out of money?
I would certainly hope so! This quest of his to buy the Presidency is ridiculous. It is looking as though he wants it only because his daddy couldn’t get it.