Burn, Baby, Burn

The Daily Kos has a delightfully gloating report on Bush's re-election campaign spending. Apparently, Junior is as irresponsible with campaign donations as he is with your tax dollars, and this will have a negative impact on spending on local Republican campaigns nationwide:

[A]ccording to OpenSecrets.org, Bush had raised a total $185 and had nearly $109 million cash on hand at the end of March. At the end of April, it was $200 million total raised, and $72 million cash. Check my math, but it looks like Bush spent $52 million in the month of April alone.

$72 million is about five weeks expenses at the April burn rate. ...

But here's the fun part – The GOP counted on having Bush fundraise for the party committees and individual candidates down the ticket. Instead, that money is being shovelled into the Bush vortex. The more Bush has to hoard for himself, the less money he can raise for our congressional foes. ...

Update: Kerry's numbers are out. Our guy raised $30 million to Bush's $15 million. And the article notes that Bush will have to raise $12.5 million a month through August to maintain his current burn rate (adding in his cash on hand). That's money that won't make their way into competitive House and Senate races. Nice.

It reminds me, in a way, of the morbid speculation about startup companies' expected lifespans based on their burn rates as the dot.boom's peak drew near. (Hmmmm. I wonder if the domain fuckedadministration.com is available?)