The first money primary is complete. Mitt raised $20.6 million, Rudy $15 million and McCain checked in with a disappointing $12.5 million. As a known Romney hack, allow me to be the first to point out that Mitt raised ¾ as much as the two front-runners did combined.

So what’s this all mean? Again, as an acknowledged Romney supporter, I’d like to say it means everything. But that would be a lie, and I cannot lie to you, my beloved HH.com readers.

What these numbers tells us is fairly limited. It turns out that Mitt Romney, when it comes to the business side of operating a campaign, is more adept than his two rivals, one a career politician and the other a lawyer/politician. I know pols and their supporters have gotten addicted to low-balling in order to spin actual results to look better than they are, but I’ll break with that pattern and be perfectly candid: If Mitt hadn’t proven more skilled at running the “sausage factory” part of politics than McCain and Giuliani, I would have been stunned. One of the main reasons I support him is because I think Romney’s much more intelligent, insightful and creative than the typical politician.

The fundraising results also tell us that the people who know Mitt, the low hanging fruits as it were, think well of him. They also have deep pockets. (In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that the Romney campaign arrived at its $20.6 million sum without any tapping of the not-particularly-deep Soxblog pockets.) The Romney campaign also unleashed brilliant young fundraising talents like Spencer Zwick on the political scene, and their impact has been dramatic.

BUT LET’S BE CLEAR – these numbers are strictly inside baseball stuff and of limited significance. All three of the top contenders on both sides raised enough money to run a first rate campaign. Whether they use that money to actually run a first-rate campaign is the question.

Money isn’t the be-all and end-all that insiders sometimes make it out to be. On the Democratic side, Chris Dodd raised $4 million. This amount should be sufficient for Dodd to kick off a legitimate campaign. But does anyone other than Senator Dodd and maybe his dog truly believe that the disagreeable senator has a snowball’s chance in hell of being president? Of course not.

Dodd effectively tapped the business community that he’s been regulating for the past two decades, people who wanted to make a deposit in the Senator’s favor bank in anticipation of the inevitable day when his ludicrous presidential pipedreams evaporate. Anywho, all snideness aside, the long and the short of it is that Chris Dodd now has enough greenbacks on hand to bring a message to the American people. If the message and the messenger resonate sufficiently, Dodd has a chance.

So as a Romney supporter, I’ll appraise today’s developments as two pieces of really good news and one piece of non-news. The first piece of good news is that these numbers buttress the argument that I’ve long made that people who get to know Romney (like I did long ago) find him incredibly impressive. Extrapolating this out to the distant days when Americans actually head to the ballot box, if the country gets to know him the way his supporters have, he’ll be hard to beat.

The other piece of good news, as mentioned above, is that Romney is proving to be innovative and dynamic at this part of presidential campaigning. At the risk of gushing, Romney’s numbers are fairly remarkable for a guy who’s still unknown to most of the country and in single digits in the polls. The hope here in the heart of Romney country is that the fund-raising innovations and prowess will ultimately be reflected in all aspects of the campaign.

Which sort of leads us to the piece of non-news: The money in itself means very little. This quarter’s numbers were a hurdle the candidates had to get over to be able to run a legitimate campaign. All the top tier candidates, even McCain with his disappointing results, sailed over the hurdle with ease.

By way of elaboration, the fundraising record that everyone just broke this quarter was previously held by Phil Gramm. The young ‘uns out there in Blogistan are probably saying “Who?” while the old timers smirk. Gramm in 1996 had a ton of money and an eminently beatable frontrunner in Bob Dole and still never managed to get off the ground. Dole’s ultimate Republican challenger? Protest candidate Pitchfork Pat Buchanan, who “lived off the land” because he couldn’t/didn’t raise significant money.

In order for money to do any candidate any good, he (or she) has to have a message and a campaign that gains traction with the American public. The money is a means, not an end.

Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.