Obama Spends More Campaigning Against No One Than the GOP Campaigns Combined

Imagine what he would have to spend if he actually had a contested primary, and yet his approval numbers continue below 50% (h/t Don Surber):

With Republicans locked in a contentious and expensive primary, President Barack Obama has spent a small fortune in recent months to build and maintain a campaign operation that is larger, more diverse and more focused on November’s general election than any of his opponents’ organizations.

Republican contenders like Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have surely been watching their expenses during their primary elections: millions here for ad spending, millions there for travel, rallies and consulting fees. What’s left keeps the lights on, the phones ringing and the staff paid.

But Obama, who faces no serious challenger for the Democratic nomination, has sunk his cash into an expansive brick-and-mortar operation with offices in nearly every state. His campaign has spent more than $135 million on operations through February, according to an Associated Press analysis of Federal Election Commission records. That’s about $3 million more than all his GOP challengers combined.

Republicans bristle over reports that Obama’s paid staff exceeds 500, many of whom work in the campaign’s Chicago headquarters.

“I think the campaign is single-handedly trying to lower the unemployment rate by hiring field staff,” Romney political director Rich Beeson said. “When they point to the fact about how many people they’ve got hired and how many offices they’ve got, they’re just trying to distract people from the reality of (how) they’re going to have a heck of a time finding people to get out and vote for him.”

While he's still able to raise a lot of money, this won't be the billion dollar campaign we were promised. He simply can't get many of the smaller donors he got last time and the big donors are already tapped out. In typical liberal fashion, he's building a huge bureaucracy that will be very costly to maintain and likely very inefficient to operate.