Republican Election Spending

A quick thought. Last week, at the height of the Obama lead in the polls, there was some talk here and there among pundits that the Republicans should divert money from McCain to some of the closer US Senate races - a la Bob Dole in 1996.

Now, there have been cases reported of Republicans redistributing resources (e.g. Michigan, some cut back on McCain joint ads with the RNC) but, from what I have seen so far, there has not yet been a wholesale flight of money from McCain to Republican Senators in tight races.

If it is going to happen, my guess is that it will happen this week. It will be very instructive to see what the RNC ad buys are for this coming weekend and next week. If you see a lot of cash to try and prop up Republican Senators, then you can probably assume that the big shots in the Republican party have wriiten off John McCain.

Also, look to see where McCain spends his time next week. If he does a lot of appearences in states where the Republican Senator is in trouble, the race for the White House us probably over (of course, given how bad McCain/Palin is doing in the polls, they could be told to stay away from those states too).

Finally, what kind of cool aid is the McCain campaign drinking? On a conference call today, Rick Davis from the McCain campaign said that McCain's polling shows a tight race in Iowa. Unless something had drastically changed on the ground, Iowa has not been in play for weeks. Obama has been up big for weeks in all the polls in Iowa. Yet, for some reason McCain continues to think that he has a shot there. In fact, as I recall, McCain made a visit to Iowa recently and the pundits were all asking why. Has the McCain campaign left the reality based community or do they know something that nobody else does? This is puzzling and worrying at the same time, on a variety of levels.