I don't care if he writes his own checks or not but if you have grass roots support it's not a requirement as it seems to be in Romney's case.
The Thompson aide made a good point about ad times getting sold and filled up, so even if you have a fortune to drop then, there are no ad slots left to buy.
That is a very powerful reality, but I think it is read wrong in terms of what it means. Romney can schedule his expenditures with 100% flexibility. His opponents cannot. They are constrained by the rate at which money comes in from fund raising.
What this means is . . . pretty clear. Romney can buy up the choice ad slots before the others can place their orders because they won’t have the cash on hand to fund both their staff plus the ad buy. This is the hurricane they have to find an answer for.
They are forewarned. Possibly the only answer is for staff to eschew salary to enable ad buys. That is asking them to take a huge risk. If their guy doesn’t win/survive, they won’t ever get paid.