Voting with their dollars

From The Washington Post:

Campaign contributors to the 2008 presidential candidates heavily favored Democrats in the three-month period that ended Saturday, giving three dollars to the party's leading contenders for every two dollars they gave to the top Republican candidates.

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's 258,000 contributors since January exceed the combined number of donors of former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), according to estimates provided by the campaigns.

Obama also raised more than Hillary and he is getting his contributions in smaller individual amounts from a greater number of donors than Hillary, who is getting most of her cash by hitting up the same fat cats sugar-daddies who had such lucrative (and corrupt) relationships with her husband.

What this means is that the average Democrat is highly motivated to see a Democrat victory in 2008. They may be less than happy with the idea of Hillary at the head of the ticket and so are pouring money into the Obama campaign, but in the end they will accept either.

Republicans, on the other hand, are holding on to their cash because there is both a widespread dissatisfaction with the candidates who have announced so far and a widespread sense that the real race hasn't begun.

The Republican base wants to win in '08 as much as the Democrats but they do not wish a pyrrhic victory, which is what they would get if they defeat liberal Clinton or Obama only to get liberal Giuliani instead. We have had eight years of fighting off attacks not only from Democrats but from the "Republican" White House as well and we are tired of fighting a war on two fronts.

Even the most venomous leftist Democrat would be preferable to another backstabbing RINO so we are holding out for a real conservative.

Even socially liberal Republicans who would otherwise love Giuliani are holding back their contrabutions from him because they have a sense of the depth of the dislike which religious conservatives, border security hawks and gun owners have for him. The realization that enough conservatives would either sit out the election or cast a protest vote for a third party candidate if a pro-abortion, pro-amnesty, anti-gun RINO tops the Republican ticket is enough to cause the "Chamber of Commerce" Republicans to mostly keep their checkbooks closed to Rudy.

When Fred Thompson enters the race you will see a sharp trunaround.