The 3rd quarter fund raising numbers are starting to trickle in.

Supposedly, Mitt Romney raised about $10 million while McCain only raised around $5 million. Rudy's people haven't released any numbers yet, but said that they thought he'd, "do as well as the other Republicans — maybe we will do better than some." That's not very rousing, but perhaps they're trying to drive down expectations.

Ron Paul's people have announced that he raised 3 million, which is pretty good for a 2nd tier candidate who's going nowhere. Ominously, Mike Huckabee's people haven't released any numbers, which probably means he didn't have the big third quarter he needed to get in the hunt.

There's also no word on the other 2nd tier candidates which is probably a pretty good indication that they're not setting the world on fire in the fundraising department.

Then there's Fred.

Fred Thompson raised about $8 million or so. Per a press release they sent out today,

(1) More than 60% of that $8 million came in after Fred Thompson’s September announcement. Our “quarter” was mostly the month of September.

(2) Donation levels post-announcement = approximately $200,000/day.

Some people are panning Fred's numbers, but from where I'm sitting, raising roughly $4.8 million in about 3 weeks isn't bad. It's a good indication that he'll probably be able to raise roughly $18-$25 million in the 4th quarter, which would be a very solid quarter.

Moreover, if Fred can actually start regularly passing Rudy in the national polls, which seems very possible at this point, that could spike his fundraising as well in the next quarter as more people climb on to his bandwagon and send money to the front runner.

Again, as I've said before, I think Fred would have been better off getting in back in early July, because he could have finished this quarter with $20+ million raised instead of $8 million, but he did pretty well for the limited amount of time he had to go all out after he declared himself to be in the game.

The verdict on Fred's numbers: Good, but not spectacular.

PS: The numbers for the other candidates are surprisingly lackluster. McCain's totals are pathetic and Mitt's aren't particularly impressive either. It'll be interesting to see how Rudy did, but you have to think his numbers were less than stellar since he hasn't released them yet.