All the candidates have released their FEC reports today. McCain’s report, the Politico suggests, cements the prediction that he will accept public funds in the general. This has one obvious outcome — he will be outspent badly. Very badly — and one slightly less obvious one: He’ll also be going to the Republican National Committee for help in paying for advertising, thus hanging Congressional Republicans out to dry. Already being out-fundraised by the Dems, the NRCC and the NRSC won’t be able to rely on the RNC to bail out candidates not lucky enough to be running in swing states, because the RNC will be splitting the cost of McCain’s campaign with, well, the American taxpayer.
Before you get too upset, the RNC will be paying a bigger chunk than you, likely paying out the $19M that national party committees can spend promoting specific candidates, plus millions more via ads that promote “both the party and the candidate,” a controversial accounting feature invented by the Bush campaign in 2004. Oh, and since McCain will be raising money for the party rather than for his own campaign, donations can come in at a maximum of $28,500 per person, rather than the skimpy $2,300 chunks that have formed the basis for Clinton and Obama’s bankrolls.
This pretty much is the opposite of the kind of campaign McCain would ideally want to run, on many different levels.
In other news, Obama spent $16K on Facebook.