The Politico delves into Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign finance disclosures and comes up with a list of bundlers from the business sector and the lobbying sector. Though positioned as an outsider to Washington politics, Romney appears to have made fast friends with some of K Street's big names.

This Hartford Courant article on the (ever) acclerated pace of fundraising by members of Congress looking to keep their jobs features several moments of candor from lobbyists who acknowledge the important role campaign contributions play in facilitiating their work.

After a decade of buying power and influence on the Hill, former Rep. Tom DeLay's ARMPAC (Americans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committe) is going out of business says Paul Kane at Capitol Briefing. The subject of intense legal scrutiny, the activities of ARMPAC, and its local offshoot TRMPAC, placed purveyor Tom DeLay in hot water from which he has yet to escape.

Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged he wouldn't take money from federal lobbyists in his bid for the White House, a promise that puts him in a tough spot: just who qualifies as a lobbyist, and what qualifies as lobbyist money? Moreover, with the fundraising wars just beginning, how do you mount a serious campaign for the Presidency while promising to change the system?

If he looks like a lobbyist, and talks like a lobbyist, and acts like a lobbyist, but doesn't call himself a lobbyist on campaign finance disclosure reports...then presidential candidates can take his money without having to look like they're taking lobbyist cash, right? The Hill exposes the K Street equivalent of your mother writing "from Santa" on your Christmas presents.

This article, from David Weigel at Reason Magazine, claims the rise of the small-dollar donor eliminates the need for public financing. He trots out the beaten horse of Howard Dean's presidential campaign as proof that the internet provides an effective counterbalance to any iniquity inherent to privately financed elections. While the internet is a valuable tool for enhancing participation in politics, Weigel is kidding himself if he thinks it has corrected the imbalance big-money fundraising creates.

What do you get when you cross a highly competitive slate of Congressional races with a Presidential race? A wooley jumper! Sorry...wrong joke: actually you get a campaign fundraising season sure to dwarf its predecessors in terms of sheer dollars raised and overall number of wealthy donors squeezed dry by a parade of candidates and their fundraising invitations.

Oh, the games we play. Candidates for President are working the fundraising circuit with feverish intensity, while doing everything they can to downplay how much money they'll raise -- all so that on April 15th, when the first campaign filings are due, they can awe and astound with the piles of money they've raked in, and get that one step closer to the White House.

Everybody who has thrown their hat into the ring for the 2008 Presidential race is looking for a fundraising edge to vault them ahead of their competitors: Mitt Romney, vying for the Republican nomination, has targeted students as fundraisers, promising them a 10% commission for every dollar over $1,000 they bring in. It's an arrangement that raises some ethical questions.

The next election frenzy hasn't begun in earnest in the public eye, but behind closed (and gilded) doors, the race for campaign cash is on and as these two articles describe.