With the debacle unfolding this week, members of his own party have screamed for Romney to get off the fundraising trail and get to actual campaigning. Now we know why. His campaign is in debt and he doesn't have the money to run a full fledged campaign, that he advertised they had.

I'm not a finance person but ever since Romney started reporting huge money haul after the Republican primaries after a previous anemic record and obfuscation, something smelled fishy and said so in comments on other blogs. I actually drafted a diary about 3 months ago that I regret not finishing up and publishing.

Now we know what you too may have suspected: that Romney pulled the equivalent of a combined "Enron" & "Wall Street credit default swap" shell game on the public about his campaign's money haul.

He's been raising money alright, but it's coming from few donors who are maxing out to his campaign, the RNC, and the Republican Governors Association. This bundling of different kinds of monies into headline-grabbing newsbuzz intended to capture the news cycle, impress corporate journos, and intimidate Democrats, but the campaign itself can use only so little of this money.



And the party committee, which Mr. Romney helped propel to record-breaking receipts in July, is allowed to spend only about $22 million on advertising that is coordinated with Mr. Romney.

The fanfare-driven monthly announcements have been a gimmick intended to imitate the oohs and aaahs that accompanied each monthly campaign haul announcement from the Obama campaign in 2008. Nothing was more impressive than the record breaking $150 million that rolled in during the month of Sept 2008 when outrage at Sarah Palin's "community organizer" insult during Republican convention fired up Democrats to give like they'd never given before.

Romney's campaign is like the CEO who puts out rosy quarterly reports and projections. But the moment you take a closer look all you see are accounting gimmicks. We've been told he's "Mr. fix-it", "turnaround artist" blah blah blah. He got every conceivable advantage including the gift of Citizen's United from SCOTUS, and poodle corporate media that breathlessly chirps his trick cash haul every month without media scrutiny. Why? Because the media has been salivating to get their share of that supposed haul in advertising $$$. But it's clear, Romney is a fraud just like many of his Wall Street vampire capitalist cohort.

Now the media is wondering "where is the beef", and ad revenue share as they'd hoped:



In Colorado, Mr. Romney is being outspent $2.2 million to $1.5 million during that same period. In New Hampshire, Mr. Obama is spending $1.2 million, compared with $380,000 to benefit Mr. Romney. The vast majority of that is coming not from the Romney campaign but from American Crossroads, the conservative super PAC.

Nothing like a drug dealer cheated out of his/her share of the loot. The media is sensing they've been had and it's beginning to sting them.

Furthermore it may turn out that the anticipated Rove blitzkrieg is exactly like Rove Math circa 2006 plus a giant con game to bilk billionaires of unaccountable cash. Afterall the best-paying gig in town is Repub strategist and adman in this Superpac stimulus economy. As Daily Beast reports:



This isn’t just democracy. It’s big business. “This is the greatest windfall that ever happened for political operatives in American history,” says Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “It allows them to make extraordinary amounts of money for work whose effectiveness is hard to determine.”

If all this yields paltry results in Nov, expect the Maddoff-like recriminations the likes of which we've never seen.

As the NYT piece notes his own advertising footprint in the battleground states is light precisely because he has very little money in his campaign's control. They were relying on PERCEPTION and the free media buzz it generates plus Karl Rove's so-called Superpac warchest to fluff them up. I even doubt Rove's supposed $$$ haul, as we hear about ad buys but the tally is adding up to nowhere near the $1 billion they've been bandying about. The whole shtick reflects the sorry state of the Republican party today. All they know to do is Gimmicks because their ideas (if they can be called such) are RANCID. So they obsess over how gilded wrapping paper in which to hide their BS is. But BS is BS. Period!

If you carefully scrutinize the Romney campaign, it is marked by a giant case of Obama-envy followed by Obama-copying. But since he is NOT Obama, he could only resort to trickery, and media hooey to camouflage what is essentially a hollow run for the highest office in the land. He just wants to BE president, damnit!

Our job is to let that remain a pipe dream.

***UPDATE: ROMNEY PAID HEFTY BONUSES TO STAFF*

Talk about Wall Street culture of paying bonuses even when nothing of value has been created! Washington Postreports:



Mitt Romney’s campaign handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses last month to senior staffers, according to new disclosure records filed Thursday. Richard Beeson, Romney’s national political director, received a $37,500 payment on Aug. 31 in addition to his salary, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. In addition, records show at least six other top staffers each received $25,000 bonuses on the same date: campaign manager Matt Rhoades, general counsel Kathryn Biber, policy advisor Lanhee Chen, communications director Gail Gitcho, digital director Zach Moffatt and advisor Gabriel Schoenfeld. Two other employees received $10,000 bonuses.

H/T Thanks to Ukit for reference

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