Deluding Much?

By Fester

I was reading Patrick Ruffini's take on McCain's abysmyal fundraising for March and the apparant decision by the McCain campaign to opt-in for general election federal funds.  He usually is an informative and analytical conservative/GOP machine read and on this issue, he still is.  The fundraising was ugly, especially since most of the money McCain raised as the consolidated Republican nominee was from big, single check donors.  He has not been able to expand his low dollar donors from the McCain ghetto and grab donors from other campaigns so far.  So there is a significant excitement, motivation and execution gap. Good news for Dems, as the 'weaker' Democratic fundraiser outraised McCain by a significant margin in March, and the stronger Dem lapped him without significant effort.

However, the last part of the post was a classic case of conservative victimization projection:

The Democrats and the media will always try to psych us out by saying it’s not our time, that all the energy is on their side. (Look how they duped the smart Beltway money into thinking 2008 would be another wave, holding back Republican recruitment and triggering a flood of retirements.) It doesn’t matter how many polls say John McCain is winning in states like Pennsylvania and Oregon, [emphasis in original]

Wow --- always the media's fault.  Recruiting problems have nothing to do with 81% of the country thinking we're on the wrong track, a president who has destroyed the Republican brand, a self-inflicted immigration wedge that divides a significant element of the GOP base from the rest of the party, a city destroyed, an unpopular war, $3.30/gallon gas, a weakening dollar, and a bursting housing bubble.   No, this is the media's fault that the Republicans are going to have another very tough cycle (or two as 2010 again favors the Democrats in the Senate)

I also remember March 2004 when Kerry had consolidated the nomination and had received a bunch of positive press and his numbers went even to slightly above Bush's for a while.  Plenty of Democratic partisans (myself included) took this as a sign that non-typical swing states were in play (Go Virginia!) and then as the normal campaigning season rolled around, demographics and identity groups re-sorted themselves in the conventional manner.  It is far more fun to watch this process when it is the other party engaging in this behavior.