McCain fundraising in the tank. Republican Party to have to foot the bill.

John McCain is having some serious difficulty getting the big Republican doners (you know those guys; the 1 percenters with all the money) to give money to his campaign for the Republican Presidential nominee.

It has gotten so bad and his funding is trailing both of the Democratic Presidential Candidates by so much that McCain is planning to tap into the Republican National Committee to help him fund his campaign.

From The New York Times:

Pivoting toward the general election, Senator Barack Obama is turning again to his history-making fund-raising machine, which helped to anoint him as a contender against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and then became a potent weapon in their battle for the Democratic nomination.

To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts, is leaning on the Republican National Committee. Mr. McCain’s efforts to raise money suffered a blow this weekend when a key fund-raiser, Tom Loeffler, resigned because of a new campaign policy on conflicts of interest.

McCain, the Maverick™ who says that he does NOT deal with lobbyists had another lobbyist resign again this weekend.  

From the WSJ:

The McCain campaign lost another top aide Sunday over ties to lobbying, the fourth such departure in less than two weeks.

Thomas Loeffler, a former U.S. representative from Texas, resigned from his post as a national finance committee and campaign co-chairman, a campaign spokesman confirmed Sunday.

Mr. Loeffler is the founder of The Loeffler Group, a San Antonio lobbying shop that has worked on behalf of AT&T Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. as well as foreign interests, including Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Loeffler’s resignation continues the fallout from a new policy that John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, instituted last week requiring full disclosure of involvement with lobbying firms and other independent political groups.

No wonder McCain can’t get anyone to donate to him.  The Republican base despises him, the independents are growing tired of politicians telling them one thing and then doing another (like the McCain Lobbyist spin that keeps backfiring on him) and his campaign has had all of the air sucked out of it by the ongoing Democratic Primary race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Back to McCain’s money woes.

Mr. McCain is likely to depend upon the party, which finished April with an impressive $40 million in the bank and has significantly higher contribution limits, to an unprecedented degree to power his campaign, Republican officials said.

To that end, Republican officials said they were enlisting President Bush, a formidable fund-raiser who has raised more than $36 million this year for Republican candidates and committees, for three events on Mr. McCain’s behalf. They will appear together at a fund-raiser in Phoenix on May 27, and the next day the president will take part in a luncheon with Mitt Romney in Salt Lake City and then an exclusive dinner at Mr. Romney’s vacation home in Park City, Utah.

You can’t tell me that you don’t ABSOLUTELY LOVE this set of current events!

McSame is truly linking himself at the hip to President (Worst Disapproval Rating Evah!) Bush because he needs the Neo-Con money, even while he tries to distance himself from Mr. Bush in other ways.

In other words, not only will McSame have to use George W. Bush as his personal cheerleader for campaign financing, he is going to have to rely on the Republican National Committee and various 527 groups to do his fundraising and run commercials for him.  

The more the RNC has to spend on McSame’s campaign, the less they have left to spend on Senatorial and Congressional campaigns.  Sounds like a win-win for Democrats all the way around.

I love the smell of Republican desperation in the morning.

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x-posted at eenrblog