Mitt Romney's campaign has turned into something unusual: A hybrid between self-financing and individual donations. The Washington Post reports that with the end of the third quarter, Romney will have raised a total $40 million to date from outside donors plus $15 million from his own personal fortune.

Interestingly, the infusion of $15 million has been done in the form of loans, not direct contributions. If they had been contributions, this would have triggered the "Millionaires Amendment" in McCain-Feingold, which would increase the maximum amount that individuals would be allowed to donated to any of Romney's Republican opponents.

Which does invite the question: Will these loans ever be repaid?

Are religious-right elites serious enough in opposing Rudy Giuliani that they'd willingly throw the election to the Democrats if he's nominated?

The New York Times reports that at a breakaway meeting of the ultra-secretive Council for National Policy, such leading figures as James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Richard Viguerie and others agreed on that very proposition. The group will reportedly unveil at a later date a statement that "if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate."

Governor Ernie Fletcher (R-KY) has been trailing badly in the polls again Democratic nominee Steve Beshear, largely due to ethics scandals that have dogged his administration. So in his new ad, his campaign goes after Beshear's ethics, with what turn out to be pretty shaky claims:

The ad's claims have to do with Beshear's temporary removal from a case involving the liquidation of the now-defunct Kentucky Central Life Insurance company in the 1990's, over questions of whether Behshear's law firm, Stites & Harbison, had a conflict of interest.

The Lexington Herald-Leader debunks the ad's claims, noting that the alleged $100,000 "cover-up" payment came from the firm agreeing to pay the costs of an outside counsel's investigation of them. Furthermore, Beshear was allowed to participate in the case again after the investigation was done.

"I don't think Hillary will have me."

— Former Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson, in response to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's question about whether he would want to serve in the next president's cabinet.

John McCain's campaign released the following statement in response to the fallout over his interview with Beliefnet, in which he said the Constitution founded America as a Christian nation and that he would prefer to vote for a Christian for president:

The senator did not intend to assert that members of one religious faith or another have a greater claim to American citizenship over another. Read in context, his interview with beliefnet makes clear that people of all faiths are entitled to all the rights protected by the Constitution, including the right to practice their religion freely. In the interview he also observed that the values protected by the Constitution, by which he meant values such as respect for human life and dignity, are rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. That is all he intended to say to the question, America is a Christian nation, and it is hardly a controversial claim.

A new round of polling from American Research Group finds Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney leading in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Curiously enough, this is the first poll ever to show Romney ahead in South Carolina, a state where he usually has trouble registering, though the result is within the margin of error.

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A new Iowa poll from Newsweek shows Mitt Romney and Barack Obama narrowly leading their respective caucuses, though the results are within the margins of error.

Among Democrats, Obama has the support of 28% of likely caucus-goers, followed by Hillary Clinton's 24%, John Edwards at 22%, and Bill Richardson at 10%. The margin of error is ±7%.

Obama also leads in the combined first/second choices with 52%, followed by Hillary at 44%, Edwards at 41%, and Richardson with 19%.

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney has 24% support among likely caucus-goers, followed by Fred Thompson at 16%, Rudy Giuliani with 13%, Mike Huckabee at 12%, and John McCain with 9%. The margin of error is ±9%.

Romney has a lead for combined first/second choices with 45%, followed by Giuliani's 34%, Thompson at 26%, Huckabee with 14%, and McCain at 13%.

The second choices can be important in case the race gets too dirty between certain competitors, alienating many of their supporters and pushing them towards other choices. John Kerry and John Edwards benefitted immensely from the same effect in 2004, due to the negative campaigning between Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt.

Hillary Clinton yesterday proposed a "Baby Bonds" program, in which the government would give newborns $5,000 in an interest-bearing account that would become available to them at age 18, for the purposes of paying for college, going towards home ownership or other causes. The cost would be roughly $20 billion per year.

ABC News notes that Hillary proposed something similar in 2006, only then it was $500.

Only a day after reports that Gingrich would put up a Web site seeking pledge money for a presidential campaign, an aide now says that he is backing off and will not run, after all.

"He will continue to bring the American people solutions to the challenges America faces through American Solutions, not as a candidate for president," said Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler, in a phone interview with CNN.

Tyler said that Gingrich realized he could not run his American Solutions political action committee and form a presidential exploratory campaign at the same time.

In a foreign-policy speech yesterday, Mike Huckabee severely faulted President Bush's handling of the War on Terror, specifically in regards to his trust of the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — and even compared Bush to the military strongman who presides over the latter country.

"Just like Musharraf, since 9/11, the Bush administration has played both ends and the middle, assuring the American people that it’s doing everything it can to protect them, while tiptoeing around our supposed ally," Huckabee said. "It’s been afraid of upsetting the apple cart, even though the cart contains poisoned apples destined for export to the United States."

Bill Clinton is now getting involved in the talk about whether Barack Obama, his wife's chief rival, is experienced enough. In an interview with Bloomberg's Al Hunt, Bill said that it's not a fair comparison between Obama's experience and his own in 1992, when he was the same age as Obama is now.

"I was the senior governor in America," he said. "I had been head of any number of national organizations that were related to the major issue of the day, which is how to restore America's economic strength."

Rather, he said Obama's experience is much like his own back in 1988 — when he decided not to run for president. "I came within a day of announcing, because most of the governors were for me and I had been a governor for six years," said the former president. "And I really didn't think I knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run."

Barack Obama is advocating a change in drug-sentencing laws in order to address the severe differences in sentencing for powder versus crack cocaine.

"If you're convicted of a crime involving drugs, of course you should be punished," Obama said at Howard University's opening convocation. "But let's not make the punishment for crack cocaine that much more severe than the punishment for powder cocaine when the real difference is where the people are using them or who is using them."

Obama also discussed the Jena Six controversy: "Like Katrina did with poverty, Jena exposed glaring inequities in our justice system that were around long before that schoolyard fight broke out."

Obama could be taking a risk in discussing cocaine sentencing laws — in his first book, Dreams From My Father, he discussed his own drug experiences, including cocaine.

CNN reports that Barack Obama's campaign will take in $18-19 million for the quarter, and Hillary Clinton's campaign will have raised $17-20 million. If true, this means that they are about tied, or Hillary might even have out-raised Obama after two quarters in which he beat her in the money race.

There is of course the chance that the campaigns are both working the expectations game, and could have actually raised more than this. Or, the sources might actually be telling the truth.

Fred Thompson's campaign is expected to report taking in over $7 million for the third quarter, according to CNN. Thompson only officially declared his candidacy early this month, but this is still a letdown in that he'd been actively courting donors and building his campaign through his "testing the waters" committee all Summer.

Any last-minute presidential candidates now have a firm deadline to meet. New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner has selected November 2 as the filing deadline to get on the ballot for the state's primary — meaning that if Newt Gingrich or Al Gore decide to get in, they better do it before then.

It's still unclear when the actual primary will be, though. Gardner has a unique latitude among state election officers in setting the dates, and he has declined to pick that one yet so as to maintain his own leverage and head off any state trying to leapfrog over New Hampshire.

The Obama campaign has backtracked from a remark by Michelle Obama, that the candidate has to win Iowa. But it turns out that a Obama's campaign manager accidentally said the same thing in a new article in The New Republic:

I ran into Obama's wiry campaign manager, David Plouffe, chatting in a doorway. I mentioned to Plouffe that I had just returned from Iowa. "Iowa — that's the whole shebang!" he said. Then he paused. "I guess I'm not supposed to say that," he added with a grin. "But Iowa is very important."

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