It's unlikely that the Romney campaign didn't know its own May fundraising total when Obama and the Democrats announced theirs Thursday morning, but the Republicans waited until midday to announce they'd out-paced the president.

It was a smart move. Rather than one round of news stories reporting both totals, the delay made for competing narratives: One reporting Obama's $60 million month (which mostly got cursory three-paragraph AP coverage) and a second focusing on how badly Romney and the Republican Party had beat that figure with the $76.8 million they pulled in. Those stories went a lot bigger than the Obama fundraising stories, seeing as how they bucked the narrative of Romney nipping at the president's heels. And since both rounds of stories came out Thursday morning, the headlines in Friday's paper editions will probably be about Romney outpacing Obama, so he'll win that news cycle too. Not bad maneuvering, Romney campaign. Add in the return of moneyed former Newt Gingrich supporter Sheldon Adelson, who now says he wants to give $1 million or more to the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future, and you've got a good money-news day for the Romney campaign and the Republicans. And a well played one, at that.

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Adam Martin