Oh my. It’s Gentry Collins, who served as political director of the Republican National Committee until this morning. How bad are things at the RNC under Michael Steele? This bad.

“In the previous two non-presidential cycles, the RNC carried over $4.8 million and $3.1 million respectively in cash reserve balances into the presidential cycles,” Collins writes, underlining his words for emphasis. “In stark contrast, we enter the 2012 presidential cycle with 100% of the RNC’s $15 million in lines of credit tapped out, and unpaid bills likely to add millions to that debt.”

Collins estimates that we lost 21 House seats (including Arizona 7), 3 governor races (CT, MN, VT), and 2 Senate races (WA, CO) because of the RNC’s inability to fund turnout efforts and other aspects of the campaign.

The short version of the RNC’s 2010 troubles as described by Collins: The committee couldn’t afford to run an independent expenditure ad campaign on behalf of their candidates, didn’t fund a paid voter turnout operation for Senate and gubernatorial races, left its vaunted 72-Hour turnout program effectively unfunded, offered only a fraction of the direct-to-candidate financial contributions they made four years ago and dramatically scaled back its support of state parties.

Apparently Collins spent the summer meeting with big GOP donors — a job usually not done by the political director.

“For the 2010 election year itself, RNC cash transfers to state parties for political purposes were just $13.1 million—less than a quarter of the $56.7 million cash transfers to state parties in 2006 for political purposes,” Collins writes. “And in 2010, the RNC went $15 million into debt to fund these programs.”

Think about that. We won 60+ House seats, 9 governor’s mansions, and 6 Senate seats on a quarter of what we spent to lose in 2006. What could we have won if the RNC had been able to match its 2006 level? Ah, right, apparently another 21 House seats, 3 governor’s seats, and 2 Senate seats. But who needed those, right?

Actually, the Republican Governor’s Association transferred more funding to state parties in just 18 states than the RNC did in all 50. 31 of 60 seats we won this year were won in those 18 states that received cash from the RGA.

“In the last two non-presidential cycles of 2002 and 2006, the RNC raised $284 million and $243 million respectively,” he writes, without noting Republicans held the White House in those two campaigns. “So far this cycle, the RNC has reported raising just $170 million. Less than $18 million (10.53%) of that total came from contributions of $1,000 or more, collected from a mere 5,379 donors. This is a fraction of either the previous cycles.”

Of the $170 million raised to date, Collins points out that much of it came from low-dollar donors giving online and in the mail, suggesting Steele can’t claim credit for it.

“These contributions do not result from personal solicitation by the Chairman but, like other macro-political trends, are reflective of the anti-Obama/Pelosi/Reid wave that drove energy and intensity to historic highs this cycle,” Collins writes.

The problem with a bunch of smaller donors is that the cost of fundraising overhead goes up.

“Historical fundraising costs have been less that 50 cents per dollar raised: Estimates for cost-of-funds this cycle were much higher, and some estimate that they were closer to 70 cents on the dollar,” the aide writes, underlining his words.

So for every dollar raised by the RNC, 70 cents went to fundraising costs. And it wasn’t just funding that caused problems.

Of the 72-Hour Program, devised by President George W. Bush’s political team, Collins recalls that the states didn’t even know that the turnout effort had been shelved until days before it was to begin this year.

“States were not notified of RNC Chief of Staff Mike Leavitt’s order that no 72-hour funding would be made available to them until October 22, 2010 – just one week before the 72-hour window opened,” he writes.

What a mess.