McCain’s campaign just released a statement saying that his campaign will report raising over $12.5 million this quarter which will put him in third place behind Romney at $23 million raised and Giuliani at around $15 million raised.

What does this all mean? First off this isn’t a good sign for the McCain campaign. Here is a guy who was considered the frontrunner with all of the fundraising connections and insitutional support and yet he is going to finish in third place this quarter. Not good.

At this point in a race for President, perception means everything. It is vital to pick up key supporters across the country, important to shape media coverage, and important to convince donors across the country to give to your campaign.

Having McCain finish third behind Romney and Giuliani is all but guaranteed to generate a series of stories questioning the strength of his campaign and his chances of winning. McCain’s numbers will also give rise again to the murmurs in political circles that McCain chances of winning the GOP nomination are decreasing by the day.

One has to wonder what’s going on in McCain’s camp. By all accounts he has a fairly strong and experienced team who knew that putting up a good number in the first quarter was vital to the campaign. Now they will try to spin it by saying it’s not that important, but you know that within the McCain brain trust, people are worried.

The reality for McCain is that his fundraising numbers are a symptom of what’s wrong with McCain ’08. There just isn’t a whole lot of enthusiasm among Republicans for McCain. He has alienated conservatives with stands on any number of issues, and his attempts to placate conservatives have had the effect of turning off McCain’s real base in the party – liberal and moderate Republicans.

So, in effect, McCain really has no substantive base within the party to run on. It looks like traditional Republican donors (read: big donors) have picked up on this and we are seeing the effect of that in McCain’s numbers.