The Wall Street Journal looks at the results of the first round of the "money primary," which it says "has taken on added importance given the 2008 campaign's early start." One interesting bit of info in the story: Hillary Clinton's big first-quarter total of $26 million may be less impressive than it seems, as Clinton's campaign has made it a standard practice to collect donations for both the primary and the general election. Republican Mitt Romney's $23 million raised (including a personal loan of $2.35 million from himself to the campaign) is all for the primary.
The bad news in fund-raising is all about John McCain, though, and it's difficult to spin any other way. McCain raised just $12.5 million. The WSJ's Jackie Calmes writes:
Mr. McCain's prominence as a supporter of the war in Iraq has hurt him in national polls, but his stance remains a popular one among most Republican voters and activists. At the same time, many big donors perceive that his pro-war image could make Mr. McCain unelectable, so they have been reluctant to support him. And his record as a party maverick has made him suspect among many rank-and-file conservatives.
But McCain's pro-war image is a plus among Republicans, and isn't why he had trouble raising money. John Samples, the director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute and author of The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform, is closer to the mark when he says McCain's authoring of the campaign finance reform law - BCRA, known also as McCain-Feingold - is his real problem:
John McCain has been undone by the regulation of money in politics. Republican primary voters just don’t like him or his BCRA, and however much money he raises will not change that.
Actually, McCain's real problem isn't just McCain-Feingold, it's that his eager desire to pass campaign finance reform told many conservatives that McCain, for all his rhetoric, isn't as tightly wedded to a conservative view of constitutional principles as he ought to be. Campaign finance reform was a direct assault on the First Amendment right of freedom of speech, and it bears McCain's name.
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