OpenSecrets has the RNC story here.
Stupid liberals blame this fundraising debacle on Trump when Republicans have only themselves to blame for throwing tons of good money after bad during the primaries, exhausting the donors. If the dopes at Politicus had just opened up OpenSecrets they'd have seen how.
Jeb! Bush burned through $152 million as of August 22nd, and won bupkis.
Lyin' Ted Cruz? $155 million spent.
Little Marco? $164 million (he's over $2 million in the hole, which is the real reason why he flip-flopped and decided to run for the Senate again).
John Kasich spent $40 million (and he's nearly $6 million in the hole, which is exactly what he deserves).
Chris Christie spent nearly $32 million.
Ben Carson, you won't believe it, spent nearly $79 million.
Scott Walker: almost $33 million.
Carly Fiorina: almost $26 million.
Rand Paul spent over $21 million.
Mike Huckabee spent $10.5 million and he's still $275,000 in the hole.
Lindsey Grahamnesty: over $10 million.
Bobby Jindal blew nearly $6 million.
Rick Perry: over $17 million, also in the red by $111,000.
And Rick Santorum spent $2.5 million and he's in the red $412,000.
Pataki and Gilmore bring up the rear with relatively smaller sums.
Donald Trump has spent over $97 million and yet has over $40 million in the bank.
It's clear from the fundraising that there were only four or five real contenders here, not seventeen: Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Trump and Carson. And after four riveting televised debates before Thanksgiving 2015 polling showed the same thing, and arguably Bush no longer belonged up there. The RNC should have put its foot down at that point and cut the debate stage to four: You pull 10 points in the polls or you're out.
Things might have turned out very differently. Instead we had to listen to Kasich, Christie, Fiorina and Paul divert attention away from an in depth examination of the issues dividing the candidates attracting over 70% of Republican eyeballs. The candidate might have been better for it today, and the party more unified and flush.
