In the 2008 Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney gave his campaign more than $44 million of his own money. In 2012, he hasn't (yet) self-funded at all, and, with the primary dragging on longer than he expected, costing him
millions per state to eke out wins against Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, and his large donors
maxed out, Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake ask how long it's going to take for Romney to
open his giant wallet and give his campaign a cash infusion:
While confirming that Romney has not yet cut himself a check in this race, spokeswoman Andrea Saul offered no comment about whether the candidate is planning to spend some of his own money in the near future. Romney too has been reticent to talk about the possibility; “That’s counsel I’m going to keep with Ann and myself, and that’s all,” Romney said way back in May 2011. “So I can’t give you any more update than that. We’re just going to keep that to our own counsel.” (The door is open!) [...]
As Cillizza and Blake point out, though, contributing millions of dollars to his presidential campaign would remind voters that Mitt Romney is a guy who can afford to contribute millions of dollars to his presidential campaign (as if his constant wealth-related gaffing doesn't do that enough) and give Santorum yet another opportunity to present himself as the everyman underdog in the race.
Not only that, but beginning to fund his campaign at a point when he was supposed to have already locked up the Republican nomination might feed the narrative that Romney is not someone with a broad and enthusiastic base of support. It's one thing to begin self-funding early, as Romney did in 2007, to build a campaign and garner early support before most voters have tuned in to a race. It's another thing to be forced to do so after months of being constantly in the news and having won several primaries. Still, it has to be tempting to pour in some millions to try to completely swamp Santorum and finish this thing out on Super Tuesday.