Money is a much, much bigger problem with seated politicians than it is with elections.
Money in elections is used for advertising, basically. And there's one constant about advertising; diminishing returns. Essentially, after a certain point, each dollar you invest in advertising returns less and less of its value in customers.
Now in politics... you will never be able to sway the loyalists with campaigning or advertising. People who are loyal to a party or a political philosophy will not be running to "the other guy" on the basis of your ad campaign, no matter how much money you spend on it. It's just not going to happen, just like you're never going to get a vegan to buy your burgers.
That leaves the "independent / undecided" voters. and in truth, most of them have already decided by the time you roll your ad around. That means your main audience will be the uninformed undecided, the ones who can be swayed back and forth by which commercials they encounter.
You really don't need to spend much money to swing these people around. The bulk of advertising money in politics is directed at the other "undecided" voters to try to woo them from their position. And the more of them come to your side, the more money you're wasting by trying to convince them more. Eventually you'll hit your maximum - and since there are only so many voters, there is a maximum - and every dollar you spend on campaigning after that gives you zero value in return. What's left is mostly spent towards "energizing the base" - that's us (and them) and we (and they) cheer when "our guy" scores a good hit with a commercial or something, but there's still no chance of the other guy winning us over.
Romney could dump his entire savings into his campaign - and I hope he does! It's just him pouring his money into a bottomless pit. Barring some amazing scoop close to the election, minds are usually settled by mid-September.
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