Republican National Committee said today Mitt Romney will soon tap into his enormous stockpile of campaign cash to push back against President Obama.
"We now are in a position to outspend on television and tell our story and tell the Mitt Romney story, starting with our convention and going through the fall," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said on CNN's Starting Point program.
The fact that Romney is ready to spend more freely should come as no surprise. Romney and the RNC have raised more money than Obama and the Democratic National Committee for three straight months, including $101.3 million in July.
Romney's campaign has $189.5 million in the bank, but cannot tap into a lot of that cash until he officially becomes the GOP presidential nominee later this month.
The Obama campaign spent $232.2 million through the end of June, according to figures kept by CQ Moneyline, compared with $134.3 million for Romney.
Obama has become increasingly urgent in his fundraising pleas, saying he will be outspent by Romney and that headlines about the money disparity won't be going away.
New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, a top Romney fundraiser, said earlier this week that Romney is nearing the halfway mark of his goal to raise $800 million for the election. Johnson urged donors at a New York fundraising event to fortify for the task ahead.
"We're about halfway through our fundraising, and so if you feel tired now, you gotta go take a couple vitamins because we're gonna really have a strong push to the finish line," Johnson is quoted as saying. "It's a little bit like chopping wood. You look over at your pile and you can actually see how it looks."
USA Today