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Opinion: Pretty good dough: John McCain speaks 10 minutes, gets $5.1 million

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Here’s a quick lesson in modern political math:

Tonight, Sen. John McCain spoke for 10 minutes at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami to a small crowd of people, who were a little less rich by the end of the session.

It was, of course, a presidential campaign fundraiser, this time for the Republican Party.

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The attendees, who dined buffet style because there were only a few tables scattered around, had each paid $50,000 to be there, according to the pool reporter’s notes.

Let’s do the math on that: That’s $5,000 per minute of candidate speech per person.

McCain was surrounded by the same crowd of guys who were with him earlier in the day -- Sen. Mel Martinez; Gov. Charlie Crist; former quarterback, representative and onetime vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp; and former Gov. Bob Martinez. McCain’s wife, Cindy, introduced him.

‘I just want to tell you how grateful I am,’ the Republican candidate said. ‘We are 50 days out, and who’s counting? It’s gonna be tough. It’s a tough race, as you know.”

“We’ve got a strong headwind and we have a lot of work to do,” McCain added.

‘No matter what you see in the polls recently, Gov. Palin and I are the underdogs. That’s where we like to be. That’s the best place to be.’

McCain only mentioned Barack Obama briefly, saying, ‘This is no time for on-the-job training.’

McCain campaign people say they’ve raised $26.2 million in Florida this cycle, and $5.1 million of that came from Monday night’s one event.

That works out to, what, about $510,000 per minute of senatorial speaking time.

No wonder these guys think the economy is strong. Imagine how strong Obama’s economy feels having raised $66 million last month!

-- Andrew Malcolm

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