What’s up with the 30 individuals who gave campaign contributions to both Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann and establishment Republican Mitt Romney, as reported by OpenSecretsBlog?
They’re on a list of 300 donors who contributed more than $200 in the first six months of 2011 to multiple presidential candidates. Or how about the 23 double-gifters who gave to Romney and Barack Obama? That includes Goldman Sachs executives Timothy Kingston and Michael Troy, both of whom contributed $2,500 apiece to the Republican and the Democrat.
Even Colin Anderson, a former executive at Bain & Co. — the management consulting firm Romney once headed — wouldn’t go out on a limb. He hedged his bets with $1,000 for Romney and another $1,000 for Obama.
The only way to make sense of this seeming irrational behavior is that these early donors want, above all, to be on the winning side, whichever one that is. But it also underscores the fact that Obama is seen as vulnerable, which would have been unthinkable in 2009, when the GOP was being relegated to “regional party status” by so many pundits.
The lack of a clear Republican frontrunner may change with Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s official announcement yesterday. In the meantime, risk-aversive donors are keeping their options open.
