So Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani underperformed in their 2Q 2007 fundraising numbers, at least versus the expecations their 1Q numbers raised.

I’m probably in the minority as to my take on this, but I just can’t help thinking that all this fussing and fuming over fundraising numbers a year and a half out (or, if you prefer, six months before Iowa and New Hampshire) is much ado over, if not nothing, than certainly not a whole lot.  Haven’t we just entered the “dog days” of the primary campaign?  Aren’t we in the process of winnowing out the pretenders from the legit contenders?  Wasn’t Howie Dean blowing everybody else away in the money sweepstakes for the whole of 2003?  And didn’t he collapse like a K-Mart deck chair when it really counted, i.e. when actual votes started being cast?  Wouldn’t it make sense for we pundits, whatever our comparative statures, to “take a chill pill”?

Yeah, I know I’m whizzing into the wind on that one.  It’s the same dynamic that drives the baseball “hot stove” debates in the dead of winter.  Only the truly dedicated “hard-core” fan will dedicate him/herself to overanalyzing fundraising numbers long before the public will start paying attention to the 2008 presidential campaign to any significant degree.

It’s not that I’m not a hardcore “fan”; it’s that I have more of a bent for analyzing current events than future ones.  Besides, my crystal ball is as astigmatic as all four of my eyes, as my Election Night 1994 prognostication of Phil Gramm as the next POTUS ought to amply illustrate.

But if you just HAVE to have some futile speculation on Mitt’s and Rudy’s 2Q numbers, how do the words “Fred,” “Dalton,” and “Thompson” strike you?  I’m already on record as asserting (not “predicting”….) that Giuliani is too liberal to get the GOP nomination, and Romney is just too nice a guy not to get sliced and diced by the Clinton smear machine (Think Rick Lazio writ large - or Romney’s own lackluster performance against Ted Kennedy thirteen years ago).  But Thompson has both the substance AND the style to beat Hillary, and she knows it.  Something tells me right-wing contributors are saving their dough for where it can be most wisely invested.

This, in turn, is why I’m not freaking out over the presently huge smacker advantage that the Dem field cumulatively holds over its GOP counterpart.  That’s like fretting over your favorite NFL team getting blown out by three touchdowns in the second pre-season game.  Can’t we at least wait until Iowa Caucus-eve after Ready Freddie has been officially in the race for a quarter and see where the moolah totals are then before going shopping for political cemetary plots?

Yes, speaketh the guy who’s spent the last six-plus years calling a Hillary Clinton presidency inevitable.  I still haven’t seen enough to change my mind about that, though Senator Thompson is begatting embryonic second thoughts.  But that opinion has never, and will never, be based upon fundraising.

Think of greenback Hoovering as hits in baseball.  You can ring up as many as you want, but it’s runs that win ballgames.

And our cleanup hitter is just now getting into the lineup.