Both Adam Hasner and George LeMieux will be combing Mike Haridopolos’ FEC filings for donors to solicit for funds now that the original recipient of their largess is out of the picture.

But Haridopolos’ massive, first quarter haul was an aberration. It was driven by groups with an interest in items going before the legislature during the sixty day session.

Those donors had a basic financial interest in betting on Haridopolos and will be less quick to whip out the pocketbook for any of the candidates left standing.

But Haridopolos’  second quarter filing will be of greater interest to the campaign teams of the Hasner and LeMieux. Those donors are more likely to be ideological donors who are more amenable to arguments by the respective remaining campaigns that their candidate is the man who can take down the popular Senator Bill Nelson.

Those donors are less likely to care that neither man can do squat for them in the legislature (though if Hasner has any lingering influence in the lower chamber, he may exercise that to squeeze some money now that Haridopolos is finito).

Mike Haridopolos dropped out. Now he’s just biding his time, waiting for the next legislative session to end and his irrelevance to end.

No doubt he’s calling up lobbying firms, trade associations, and big corporation, trying to patch things up after shaking them down for millions in his brief, abortive campaign the for the U.S. Senate.

And though he might say that he wants to focus on his work in the legislature, the only thing he’ll be focused is how little his titular status as Florida Senate President will mean in his lame duck session. He won’t be the big man in the State Senate anymore. He’ll be the little man who realized he couldn’t even beat a pair of also rans like Adam Hasner and George LeMieux. And though he may not be a bright man, he smart enough to realize how very, very sad that is.

He also knows that Senators Mike Fasano and Jack Latvala will beat him like a drum and that House Speaker Dean Cannon will make Haridopolos into his prison movie plaything. Even Rick Scott, one of the most incompetent governors in recent history, will be ale to walk all over him.

Mike, you deserve some small tribute.

Here it is.

Your campaign brought joy to us all. Everything went hilariously bad early and stayed that way.

That ‘book’ you wrote? That was the gift that kept giving. I still chuckle to myself when I think about it (though Brevard Community College must still turn red with shame every time they think about how they felt compelled to give you $152,000 for that steaming bowl of c–p which was absolutely not a quid pro quo for your legislative patronage).

The amusing way in which Cannon systematically screwed you at ever turn during the last legislative session, leaving you looking like the shallow shell of a party hack in conservative clothing (which, to be honest, is kind of what you are).

We will even miss how stupid your hair looks.

Don’t stay away too long, Mike. Maybe you could run for dog catcher in a large media market next year so that we can continue to bathe in the hoary winter’s glow of your chilling incompetence.

On Sunday, July 17, Adam Hasner (@adamhasner), in his infinite wisdom, decided to post this tweet: ‘Wonder if the Dalai Lama told Pres Obama he would receive total consciousness? #caddyshack #gungalagunga‘

Isn’t that awesome? Making fun of someone’s religious beliefs is super cool!

Adam, let’s talk for a minute, just you and I. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe are members of a religion called Buddhism. And you know how Christians can be Southern Baptist or Lutheran or a bunch of other things and how Jews can Conservative or some are Reformed?

Well, Adam, the Dalai Lama is a holy figure for people known as Mahayana Buddhists. Additionally, most people show him respect, just like they do the Archbishop of Canterbury – even when they’re not Anglican!

Crazy, I know.

My point is, by making that bigoted, ignorant comment (making fun or the United States President for – gasp – meeting with a respected religious leader), you were being an a–hole.

Hey, Adam – I got an idea for you. I’m Catholic, so maybe you want to post some tweets making fun of the Pope!

That’s it! The next time President Obama meets with his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI you can say something like

Obama met with that stupid Pope guy. I wonder if the Pope ‘confessed’ him. #popeistheantichrist #catholicsgotohell

Once again. A–hole.

The latest FEC filing from Mike “the Appeaser” Haridopolos wasn’t nearly so bad, relatively speaking, as he’d feared.

Partly because the biggest (current) threat to his nascent campaign is former State House Majority Leader Adam Hasner and Hasner’s take was not much more than half of Haridopolos’ disappointing take.

Granted, George LeMieux raised a respectable $950,000 – marginally more than Haridopolos – but I just can’t take him seriously right now. He has yet to prove he can rise above some very heavy baggage.

Of course, Bill Nelson raised more than double what Haridopolos brought in and has the capacity to consistently bring in solid sums throughout the election, which is something Haridopolos has already shown himself unable to do.

And the really embarrassing thing for the wannabe U.S. Senator is that all eyes have turned towards Congresswoman West’s eye popping $1.5 million single quarter haul.

But sooner or later, West will figure out that all the money he raises (and whatever shadow money pours into the district on his behalf) probably won’t be enough to save him from a district that just isn’t suited for him. He won in a wave election, but so did Alan Grayson. In a normal election year, he’s just not a good fit for it and the situation will probably only get worse after redistricting.

So what’s happening? Folks up in Washington are wondering if he could be the one to actually make a serious run at the well-liked and well established Bill Nelson.

While I’m not sure that’s the case, it’s no secret that the Republican establishment is looking at the four erstwhile Republican challengers (Craig Miller just jumped in, but I expect him to come in near dead last in the primary) and thinking, ‘We’ve got to be able to do better than this.’ Haridopolos knows his constant stream of embarrassments and failure to keep up the pace with fundraising haven’t helped him change their minds.

So, he’s engaged in a little staff shake up. Pat Bainter and  (now former) campaign manager Tim Baker have left the campaign. Bainter might have left willingly – he can work with the state party on keeping the legislature solidly in GOP hands and got a glowing good bye from Haridopolos.

Baker on the other hand, got a curt public statement from his old boss: ‘Additionally, Tim Baker will also be seeking new opportunities and I thank him for his good work and wish him the best.’

I could be wrong, but that reads like a Trump-esque ‘you’re fired’ to me.

Now, all eyes are on who he brings in next. For the sake of his stuttering campaign, Mike had better hope he lands a big name who will lend him some credibility.

Last quarter, Mike ‘the Appeaser’ Haridopolos raised a breathtaking $2.6 million, narrowly outraising incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson.

He famously raised $1 million at a single event in Orlando during that quarter.

And it’s all been down hill since then.

In fact, it’s safe to say, that this quarter has been a disaster.

Not that $900k is such a bad haul, but the optics have been dreadful. Haridopolos hasn’t had to run in a real, competitive campaign in years and, frankly, it shows. Maybe he would have been better off had legislative seats not been so abjectly gerrymandered – maybe he would have been better prepared.

His spokesman even suggested that he would beat by his Republican competitors this cycle, though this may be an effort to set expectations for his opponents that his campaign doesn’t believe they can meet so that they can later call their results ‘disappointing.’

But, on to the meat of the matter.

What happened?

Firstly, that big haul was the product of one of the most powerful establishment politicians in the state shaking down lobbyists and special interests for money.

What happened since then is that the session (the source of Haridopolos’ power over those lobbyists and special interests) ended. And it ended badly. Trouble passing a budget, intra-party squabbles and rebellions, a seeming deliberate effort by his counterpart in the State House to make him look bad. The book, which remains the joke that never ceases to be funny.

Meanwhile, Adam Hasner steadily introduced himself as the next Marco Rubio, implicitly casting the hapless Haridopolos as Charlie Crist.

And George LeMieux did well in comparison to Haridopolos simply by not embarrassing himself so publicly and so frequently.

Yup. The Appeaser set a pretty low bar for everyone else, really.

And his legislative authority is only going to decrease. Partly because he’ll be a lame duck Senate President next year and partly because Rick Scott will probably take a bigger role in the legislative process at Haridopolos’ expense.

Haridopolos will need to start tapping into ideological money across the country – the sort of grassroots donors that powered Rubio’s rise – in order to keep the contributions flowing. Unfortunately, he really doesn’t have anything to offer them that Hasner doesn’t do better.  Hasner, like Rubio, was a little bit removed from his days as an establishment politician. Haridopolos is right smack in the middle of his prime as an establishment politician. So good luck with that.

I still don’t see LeMieux coming out of this primary alive, but he is starting to flex his finance muscles, courtesy of Washinton, DC contacts dating back to his time as interim US Senator (courtesy of Charlie Crist, who LeMieux now claims to have never met).

He’s put together a fundraiser with a dozen Senate Republicans. The roll call is impressive, but I’m not so sure that it will actually bring in as much dough as he hopes – a Senator showing up for a fundraiser is a lot different than actually going through one’s rolodex and making calls to the PAC/lobby community on behalf of someone else; take my word for it, I’ve seen plenty of members of Congress drop in on fundraisers I’ve been working on and while it was very generous of them, it rarely brings in a single extra penny.

Nonetheless, check out this invite to a DC fundraiser (hat tip to the St Pete Times):

The common wisdom is torn on this topic. Memories of Bill Clinton, in his persona as the ‘Comeback Kid,’ are still fresh. Yet pundits and prognosticators look at the disastrous opening weeks of  Newt Gingrich’s nascent presidential campaign and want to write him off without delay – and feel they have good reason to do so.

So which is? Are Clintonesque comebacks still viable? Or can we say, more than a year out, that things are over?

I am pondering this because of the whole Haridopolos radio meltdown.

The Republican primary is not until the end of  summer next year, more than fourteen months away. How much do missteps and mistakes that happen this early matter?

My suspicion: more than they used to.

People didn’t plug and pay attention as early during the day’s of the great comebacks, but with noughties and the rise of the internet, the people who decide primaries (which have lower turnouts than general elections and attract more ideological voters) are paying attention much earlier.

Haridopolos’ rejection of the Ryan plan (which has become a Republican litmus test), plus his little radio embarrassment, while be replayed over and over again and links will be embedded in countless e-newsletters, tweets, Facebook status updates, and blog posts on conservative sites from now until the primary.

It is, I think, too soon to say that Haridopolos can’t recover, but it is not to soon to suggest that this won’t haunt him from now until the end of the primary, nor is it too soon to say that Haridopolos’ odds of emerging have gone down dramatically. Before, he was the odds on favorite. Now… not so much.

Recently, Haridopolos had an embarrassing meltdown on the radio as he engaged in some really shameless prevarication on the Ryan plan. If you haven’t listened to it, you really have it – you can find the clip here.

Ryan waffles like the unnatural progeny of Belgian breakfast food and Mitt Romney and his voice, frankly, sounds like a little girl. It ends with the radio host hanging up on him on account of Haridopolos being so spineless.

The state senator did finally issue a statement through a spokesperson that he doesn’t support the Republican plan to replace Medicare with vouchers.

While that was the right call for the general election, it may kill him in the primary.

Because I just can’t see George LeMieux actually winning this thing, I think this benefits Adam Hasner. And just a few days after this little meltdown, Hasner announces a pretty good coup:

Mel Sembler, Florida’s most well known Republican fundraiser and bundler, will be his finance chair.

Sembler isn’t the force he was ten years ago, but I can guarantee that Haridopolos and LeMieux would have loved to have him on their team.

Senator John Cornyn is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). It’s his job to protect incumbent Republican U.S. Senators and elect more Republican Senators in Democratic-held and open seats. Seats like the one currently held by Senator Bill Nelson.

And he still has no faith in Mike “the Appeaser” Haridopolos nor in George LeMieux nor in Adam Hasner.

How do we know?

Cornyn recently said, “I remain convinced that the quality of the candidate still makes a big difference.” He then went on to say, “The primary, if I’m not mistaken, is August of 2012. So it’s still early and there’s plenty of opportunity for people to get involved.”

The St Pete Times suggested that he chose his words carefully to avoid another kerfuffle (like when he tried to recruit Joe Scarborough).

I suggest that his meaning is crystal clear.

You see, when an NRSC chairs likes the candidates, he says things like, “We have a really strong group of candidates running in Florida.” Maybe he praises the leading candidate, saying, “X has a strong conservative record of standing up Florida’s values.”

Instead, he said that the quality of the candidates is very important and noted that, hey, if someone else (perhaps someone of greater quality than the embarrassments currently running) wants to get in, that’s cool – he or she has lots of time to take the lead from the sad crop campaigning right now.