Support For Obama Increases As McCain Campaign Stumbles Around Hopelessly

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While the media is abuzz with Obama's huge campaign contributions haul for June, ($52 million), not quite record breaking in the field of presidential monthly contributions (he holds the record, $55 million from last February), but still significantly more than Big Business' best friend has managed this month ($22 million). House Republicans say McCain is a lazy fundraiser-- he's just depending on a pack or corrupt, criminally-oriented lobbyists to bring in the cash-- and hasn't even asked them for donations. And they haven't given him any.

Today's Hill says McCain has done OK in the Senate, where nearly half the Republicans and Joe Lieberman have donated money to his campaign. But in the House, something like one in five have given. Even members of the leadership, like Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Howdy Doody (R-FL), haven't donated to McCain. In fact only 21 House Republicans have contributed to McCain-- and that includes a $96 in-kind donation from Mike Castle (R-DE), who let McCain's campaign borrow a secretary for a few hours. One Republican who did come through for McCain big time-- despite McCain's flip flopping on adoption by gay couples-- is GOP closet queen David Dreier, who forked over $5,000.

The lack of financial gifts raises questions about McCain’s relationship with members of the lower chamber. McCain has clashed throughout his career with House Republicans on issues ranging from immigration to campaign finance reform to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A survey by The Hill in June found more than a dozen House Republicans who refused to endorse McCain, even though he will be the party’s standard-bearer this fall.

Instead of raising money from normal GOP sources-- other than Big Business, of course, which has bankrolled his whole effort so far-- McCain and his lobbyists have been wasting their time appealing to the NAACP and trying to appeal to a tiny handful of disgruntled, confused and/or racist Hillary Clinton supporters.

It couldn't have come as good news to McCain yesterday when Larry Hunter, a former Reagan staffer who is "a lifelong Republican-- a supply-side conservative-- [who] was the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for five years [and] helped write the Republican Contract with America," penned an OpEd for the NY Daily News about why he's voting for Obama. Short version: like most even remotely sane Americans, regardless of political party Hunter knows America cannot survive a third George Bush term and he is certain that John McCain is the embodiment of exactly that.

When I first made this decision, many colleagues were shocked. How could I support a candidate with a domestic policy platform that's antithetical to almost everything I believe in?

The answer is simple: Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies-- this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.

Taxes, economic policy and health care reform matter, of course. But how we extract ourselves from the bloody boondoggle in Iraq, how we avoid getting into a war with Iran and how we preserve our individual rights while dealing with real foreign threats-- these are of greater importance.

John McCain would continue the Bush administration's commitment to interventionism and constitutional overreach. Obama promises a humbler engagement with our allies, while promising retaliation against any enemy who dares attack us. That's what conservatism used to mean-- and it's what George W. Bush promised as a candidate.

...Even if my hopes on domestic policy are dashed and Obama reveals himself as an unreconstructed, dyed-in-the-wool, big-government liberal, I'm still voting for him.

These past eight years, we have spent over a trillion dollars on foreign soil - and lost countless lives-- and done what I consider irreparable damage to our Constitution.

If economic damage from well-intentioned but misbegotten Obama economic schemes is the ransom we must pay him to clean up this foreign policy mess, then so be it. It's not nearly as costly as enduring four more years of what we suffered the last eight years.

Well, at least McCain has Big Oil behind him.