Inside all the numbers analysis surrounding the latest round of presidential campaign money raising is this amazing statistic:

According to an August analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute done in partnership with Politico… among Republican givers, 89 percent of donors did not give to President Bush in his 2004 reelection race.
That figure could reflect two trends: the engagement of new donors such as those backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney from the Mormon community and the fatigue or disenchantment of Bush-Cheney donors.
Several high-ranking members of the president’s 2004 campaign finance team haven’t written a single check to a 2008 candidate.

Nine out of 10 Republican donors this time around were not Bush donors in 2004? That is a mind-numbing statistic. It not only explains why Republican fundraising is pathetically behind Democratic fundraising, it says this – Christian conservative donors are staying home.
Much of the punditry this year has focused on who will win the religious right vote. The answer is becoming clearer – perhaps no one will win their vote. They are burned, they are ashamed, and they are staying home.
Will it get better? Maybe. Or maybe not. The worst case scenario for Republicans isn’t that Christian conservatives are defecting to Democrats en masse (not a very likely scenario) but that they have made a spiritual decision to stay home The worst case scenario for Republicans isn’t that Christian conservatives are defecting to Democrats en masse (not a very likely scenario) but that they have made a spiritual decision to stay home – focusing on their families and churches and communities instead of on politics.
How ironic that the Republican nightmare scenario would be Christian conservatives acting more like Christians and less like conservatives. Stay tuned.