RNC fundraising in July 2016 is down 61% from July 2012: Donors exhausted about $750 million on 16 losers in the primaries

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.

Gov. George Pataki ends campaign for president

Who?

The former governor of New York has registered 0.0% in each of the last five major polls in the Real Clear Politics poll average.

Big mistake: Donald Trump says he's 100% in favor of ethanol

The Donald, quoted here on September 22nd:

'Trump said that he supports the RFS at Iowa’s Faith and Freedom Forum, “I am totally in favor of ethanol, 100 percent.” This is the first time Trump gave his stance on the topic publicly.'

So far this only amounts to Trump supporting the current Renewable Fuel Standard signed into law by George W. Bush in 2005, but that's still bad policy. Ethanol is inefficient as a fuel, bad for engines and does zero to reduce carbon emissions. It diverts corn from animal feed, driving up the cost of food supplies from beef, pork and poultry, and from corn added to other products. Ethanol also makes it more lucrative to put more and more land into corn production than would otherwise be the case, potentially stressing the environment.

Arguably Ben Carson's success in Iowa over Trump in part has to do with Carson's pledge to push for 30% ethanol fuel blends, a tripling of the current standard.

The crony capitalism involved with ethanol is YUGE, making Iowa more important politically than it otherwise would be were it not for federal gasoline dictates:

"Iowa produces nearly one-third of the nation’s ethanol and nearly half of Iowa’s corn goes into ethanol production, according to the Iowa Corn Growers Association.

"Iowa’s renewable fuels industry, which includes biodiesel production, supports 47,000 jobs and accounts for $5 billion of the state’s gross domestic product, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association."

That's about 3.2% of 2014 Iowa GDP.

Nebraska estimates Iowa production capacity at 25% of the nation's capability, ahead of Nebraska in second at 13%. Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and South Dakota round out the top six, who all exceed the 1 billion gallon level of capacity per year. At 10.8 billion gallons of available capacity, the top six states produce almost as much as they can at 10.6 billion gallons, over 70% of total national production.

A number of the current crop of Republicans running for president is more or less opposed to ethanol:

"Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have all expressed interest in eliminating or phasing out the ethanol mandate that requires a certain percentage of ethanol in transportation fuel."

Trump's position may reflect a conviction that he generally needs to be supportive of ethanol in these states to win them in the general election even though it appears Carson has outbid him in the primary season.

Ex-Gore-Democrat Rick Perry drops out of Republican race for president for a second time

Story here.

Santorum, Jindal and Graham should drop out, too.

Does anyone know if Pataki is still in?

Who? Gilmore? What?

Update:

Counting Perry, there have been no fewer than 37 running for the Republican nomination.

Drudge excludes No. 2 Walker and No. 9 Kasich from headline photo, includes Pataki whose poll numbers don't even register

And Fiorina and Graham don't even poll 1% on average. Where's the love, man?