“What do you think Jim Gilmore is doing right now?”–No one, ever. Or at least not since this race has started. In fact, many of you right now are thinking “Who’s Jim Gilmore?”
Which is perhaps the reason that the former Virginia governor-turned-presidential laughing stock got a measly twelve votes in Iowa. Huffington Post interviewed one of the people who voted for him, and the fact that they could interview all of the people who voted for him and it still wouldn’t fill up an hour’s worth of articles on their site is saying something. The guy who voted didn’t come out and say it but I strongly suspect “Gilmore had the best sandwiches” among his reasons…or only reason.
Of course, you might expect Jim Gilmore to quit the race that night and soon after honorably commit samurai suicide the way O’Malley did, but he stayed in the race. Although he did change his campaign song to “The Sound of Silence.”
He said he did so poorly in Iowa because he mainly focused on New Hampshire. [Sure Jim, that’s why…whatever you say.] And left Iowa early to campaign in New Hampshire, athough I’m not sure what the state known for flannel and heroin could offer a deeeeeep Southern governor that Iowa couldn’t. [Virginia may be changing, but listening to Gilmore it’s clear he was governor of Mississippi back in 1954 more than modern day Virginia.] It might have been more logical for him to not even bother with New Hampshire and instead go straight to South Carolina, but “logical” is not a word that is often paired with Gilmore.
This is the man who’s 9th (by far) in a 9 person race and that’s only because 3 people dropped out last week. Maybe that’s how he rationalizes his continued presence to his wife and increasingly-worried family dog. “We moved up three spots last week! We’ve got real movement!” And with that logic he’s just got to wait the rest of the candidates out, hoping there’s a collapse of the next debate stage and he can swoop in and be the hero. Because after today, he’ll probably be the only candidate still in the race that wouldn’t be allowed not on that stage.