Romney Could Beat Obama's Fundraising

And he'll do it without $15 million fundraisers at George Clooney's house:

Here’s a scary thought for Democrats: It’s entirely possible that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee will outraise President Obama and the Democratic National Committee in the seven-month sprint to the general election.

In April, the first month in which Romney was untethered by concerns about the primary fight and in which he and the RNC linked up efforts, their combined haul was just north of $40 million — almost the exact amount the president and the DNC gathered in that time frame.

“It’s becoming very clear the president’s opponents are very intent on funding a candidate, regardless of how flawed he is, to win in November,” said Jonathan Mantz, who served as the finance director for then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid. “So when you look at the April filing for Romney and then add his super-PAC fundraising to date, Obama’s campaign must maintain if not step up their fundraising pace.”

What’s abundantly clear is that Obama won’t have the massive fundraising gap over Romney that he enjoyed in the 2008 contest against Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

In that race, Obama raised an astonishing $771 million while McCain brought in $239 million — a total that included roughly $85 million in public financing funds for the general election. (Obama opted out of public financing.) For you non-math majors out there, that means Obama collected (and spent) three times as much money as McCain, a huge gap that almost certainly put the Democrat over the top in places such as Indiana and North Carolina and cushioned his margins in other swing states such as Florida and Ohio.

There is a zero percent chance that Romney will follow McCain’s lead and take public financing. And even though he has spent most of this election cycle running in a competitive and splintered GOP primary, Romney raised almost $100 million through April.

Romney will have one big disadvantage - he'll have to pay for his own airplanes and motorcades. He won't be able to pass the cost off to taxpayers by sticking one "official" visit in-between a bunch of fundraising events.  He will, however, have more voter enthusiasm than Obama will this year.  The time of the lightbringer is over.