Obama Has Already Spent $66 Million on the Campaign Trail

|| President Obama has already spent $66 million on his 2012 re-election campaign. ||

Big Spender.

Unable to win the 2012 on his own record, will Barack Obama attempt to buy the 2012 election?  Running unopposed for the Democratic nomination, the President has already spent more than $66 million on his re-election campaign.  That is more money than any of the Republican candidates who are actually battling for the GOP’s nomination.

During 2012’s primary campaign, one presidential candidate has bought more advertising, hired more people and spent more on a grassroots organization than any other White House hopeful.

If money is ammunition in politics, President Barack Obama so far is outgunning all the Republicans vying to challenge him, building a national network of staff and volunteers even while he’s unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Through Jan. 31, the Obama campaign’s payroll spending was more than twice the total for the four remaining Republican candidates combined. With the general election still more than eight months away, Obama’s re-election committee has spent $66 million overall, almost 20 percent more than the $56 million outlay by the best-financed Republican, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

“In a word, ‘infantry,’” said Steffen W. Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University in Ames. “They are putting in place ground troops in key swing states and ramping up the small-donor and Internet fundraising.”

The Obama campaign is “building the largest grassroots campaign in history,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman. “The Republicans have made a decision not to invest in a ground-up, grassroots organization like the president has, and we believe that our supporters reaching out to their networks will provide us with a decisive edge in November.”

It appears that the spend, spend, spend philosophy that permeated the Obama presidency, will dominate his 2012 campaign as well.  The big fear here is that there will be more of the ACORN shenanigans that were seen in the 2008 election.  Whether it be with a pack of cigarettes, a cup of coffee or cold hard cash, will Team Obama’s pockets full of money once again be used to buy votes and registrations?  Can he buy off enough folks to win the 2012 election?