Hey, remember when we found out that the Vermont Republican Party had struck a deal with the Romney campaign, in which the Mittster would park $5,000,000 in the VTGOP’s account in exchange for a $20,000/month gratuity? It’s kind of like Jack Lindley is the valet at Romney’s country club. Mitt pulls up at the front door in one of his Cadillacs, tosses the key to Jack, and says, “Hey, could you gas it up for me? But no joyriding, my man; I know what the odometer says.”

Well, according to new Federal Elections Commission filings, the Romney folks have continued to stash more cash with the VTGOP and three other state committees. The Vermont total is now $7,900,000.

Yeah, sucks to be Angry Jack. He’s got eight million RomneyBucks in the bank, and he gets a measly 20K in walking-around money. Politico.com explains the state-committee maneuver as a way for the Romney Victory Fund to elude donation limits; if it passes on some of the cash to state committees, even if it retains de facto control over the funds, it can collect bigger checks.

And if we know one thing about R-Money, it’s that no amount of cash is ever enough.  

According to Politico, the maneuver isn’t without risk:

The party committees – none of them in swing states – have wide latitude in how and where they choose to spend the Romney Victory cash. They are all controlled by Romney allies, and the funds will most likely be used for get-out-the-vote operations, but the recipient state party committees could technically spend it on TV ads or any other expense related to any federal election.

Ouch! “None of them in swing states.” (The other three are Idaho, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts.) Kinda gives the lie to Jack’s pom-pom waving in Seven Days:

“I’m not convinced we aren’t going to win up and down. And all my Democratic friends who think their boy Barack Obama is going to carry the day, well, he’s going to be lucky if he carries Vermont given the situation he’s in.”

Uh, Jack, I know what you meant, but you might want to stop referring to our first black President as “boy.”

Back to our story. The Freeploid had previously reported that, whatever federal election law might allow, there’s no way the VTGOP is going to touch a dime of that $7.9 mill.

…practically all the money being stashed in the state GOP’s account will be moved by the Romney braintrust to whatever battleground state it deems needs it most later this month.

Leaving Angry Jack high and dry. But hey, Jack’s a Romney loyalist; remember when he blew a gasket after the Ron Paul folks prevented Romney from winning a majority in the Vermont Presidential Primary? And how he helped the Romney forces screw over the Paul camp on procedural issues during the national convention? Given Jack’s warm regard for Romney, I’m sure he’s happy to gas up Mitt’s Caddy in return for a nice shiny quarter.