Stateside

Heaven forbid! Where’s my checkbook?

From Tuesday’s Washington Post:

“Democrats and their allies will have more money to spend attacking the president during the nomination battle than we will have to defend him,” Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot wrote in a fundraising e-mail.

Here’s the reality check:

The 2004 election is 14 months away, but the Republican Party has already opened a huge fundraising lead over the Democrats, according to numbers released last week by the Federal Election Commission.

The agency reported that federally registered Republican committees — which include the Republican National Committee, the congressional campaign committees and some state and local party accounts — raised a combined $139 million over the first six months of this year. That’s more than double the $56 million raised by their Democratic counterparts.