President Obama raised a lot more money for his own campaign in the third quarter than Mitt Romney and Rick Perry combined. What’s more interesting is that Rick Perry outraised Romney by $3 million, despite having a catastrophic September on the campaign trail. I see a lot of articles about how the Republican Establishment is coalescing around Romney as more and more people see him as the inevitable nominee. But that isn’t translating into big fundraising numbers. You’d think every hedge fund manager and banker in the country would be throwing money at Romney’s feet, but they seem to still be hedging their bets. Maybe it’s because Wall Street can see that the Republicans are engaged in Alice in Wonderland economics. Whatever else you might say about them, the people who work on Wall Street do understand basic economics. Many of them are more interested in how to game the system than in supporting a stable, fair, and even playing field, but they know what will cause budget deficits and that all the Republicans’ economic plans would do catastrophic damage to the health of the economy.
Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republicans continue to reject Romney as they try out new flavor of the month candidates. This month it is Haagen Dazs Black Walnut. Next month, maybe it’ll be Newt’s turn. Peach Cobbler, anyone?
