The Thrifty GOP Primary - So Far

Apparently the 2012 GOP presidential primary election cycle is cheaper at this stage than the 2008 election cycle was:

Everyone knows that campaigns get more expensive every cycle; that is, we knew it until this year. As The Washington Post detailed last week, this has been the cheapest primary campaign in over a decade. Four years ago, the Republican candidates spent a total of $132 million through the September before voting began; this year they spent a mere $53 million. That combined total is less than one candidate, Mitt Romney, spent during that period four years ago. This year he spent a mere $18 million through September, compared with the nearly $54 million he spent through September 2007.

Kevin Drum speculates:

I can think of a few reasons why this might be:

• Despite the happy talk, GOP donors don't actually believe that Obama is that vulnerable. They don't want to waste their money on a lost cause, so they're reluctant to open their pocketbooks.
• The media landscape has changed more than we think, especially for conservatives. Over the past few years, they've discovered that they can run very effective campaigns by using free media (Fox News, talk radio, etc.) rather than paid ad buys on mainstream media. This is especially true in primary campaigns, where their sole audience is the conservative base.
• Big money donors don't have much of a dog in the race this year. This is because either (a) they like all the candidates and don't have a strong preference for any of them, (b) they dislike all the candidates and don't want to be associated with any of them, or (c) they just don't think it matters much because they're all pretty much saying the same things.
• These days, all the right-wing money is going into super PACs, which seem like a more effective force for promoting conservative goals than individual campaigns do.

Myself, I never understood why campaigns had to be so expensive in the first place. Maybe things are just getting more-efficient.