Romney Fundraising

This is an enjoyable video posted on the Romney's family website about their recent fundraising day in Boston. It's interesting to me for 3 reasons, the first being that it demonstrates the huge importance of money in modern politics and how most of the campaigning and idea sharing that seems to be going on revolves around raising money. Secondly, it shows Romney's growing strength. Amazingly, he has raised more money than any other Republican in both quarters of 2007 so far, and has spent his money well to bring himself from 4th or 5th in Iowa and New Hampshire to leading in those states. On his Washington Post blog, Chris Cilliza even ranked Romney as in the lead for the overall Republican nomination! This due to McCain's implosion and Rudy's not so conservative record. It'll be really interesting to see how this thing plays out over the next 7 months (the primaries are mostly in February).

The third interesting aspect of this is the incredible importance of youtube as a source for spreading messages, both for canidates and for anyone else who wants. The biggest example of this are the two following videos which have played a major role in perpetuating the perception that Romney is a flip-flopper and political opportunist. Which is the real Romney? The one who vows to protect abortion rights, gay rights and gun control while running for Governor or Senator of a liberal state, or the one who vows to end abortion, prevent same sex marriage and joins the NRA while running for the Republican nomination? My guess is that he's probably closer to the latter, and that the former was more of a political bend for him.





To further make my point of the importance of youtube, Romney responded to this last video by quickly producing and posting one of his own: