Loading ...Failed presidential candidate Tommy Thompson endorsed Rudy Giuliani. Thompson makes the first former Republican candidate to back another candidate.
Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, the only other candidate to drop out of the race, is currently mulling whether or not he wants to lose to his successor, former Governor Mark Warner, for retiring John Warner’s Senate seat.
As many probably know, former Virginia Senator George “Macaca” Allen recently created his own blog. News of his new blog sped rapidly throughout the internet’s many tubes. But it turns out that another former presidential wannabe from Virginia has also become a blogger: Jim Gilmore. The website for Gilmore’s presidential bid, gilmoreforpresident.com, now redirects automatically to virginiapatriot.com. Indeed, Gilmore started up his blog less than two weeks after withdrawing from the GOP race in mid-July.
Both Allen and Gilmore occasionally wade into the comments sections of their posts (usually to thank adoring fans). Gilmore’s seems to be more of a regular opinion blog, while Allen’s is more likely to highlight articles by and about him. Allen’s blog is sponsored by the “Good Government Action Fund PAC” which he formed in late May to support local and statewide candidates and the blog allows visitors to donate (by snail mail) to the PAC. The PAC might be a stepping stone for Allen to reenter the political field, and Gilmore has already mused aloud about running for senate or governor in Virginia. Their sites also share one other similarity: their latest political defeats are glaringly absent from their biography sections.
Cross-posted at Ben Weyl Blog
We’re not exactly the first to report this, but fans of obscure right-wing ex-Virginia governors will want us to acknowledge that, yes, Jim Gilmore dropped out of the race this weekend, citing “the combination of my late start and the front-loaded nature of the primary schedule.” Don’t cry for Gilmore, who may simply jump back on the Virginia politics merry-go-round, slipping in amongst the various Warners in a run for either another term as governor, or for the U.S. Senate.
Gilmore’s campaign had hoped to leap into contention by positioning their candidate as a true conservative amongst a herd of RINOs, but while they could pull off the trick in experimental push-polls, they never had the money or the name recognition to do it on a large scale. Conservative pundits — those few who took note of the Gilmore candidacy — differed over how strong his claim to the conservative mantle might be, but he never even managed to generate the modicum of interest that Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback have achieved.
Irregular Times has a pretty good postmortem:
The Gilmore for President campaign failed for no other reason than that James Gilmore was not a good candidate for President.
First of all, there was Gilmore’s insistence that he be called Jim, as if he was some kind of backwoods Virginia country boy running a populist campaign, when in fact he was busy trying to cater to the right wing power elites in Washington D.C. The pretense of Jim Gilmore was overwhelmed by the rarified circles of support enjoyed by James Gilmore. Gilmore was great at slapping the backs of political insiders. He wasn’t so good at giving voters a reason to support his campaign.
Gilmore fawned over the leaders of the Religious Right, and complained that he was entitled to their support as the true conservative of the 2008 Republican pack. Of course, almost every Republican presidential candidate took the same course. In the crowded effort to kowtow to religious right wingers, Gilmore had nothing to make him stand out from the crowd.
More here. This week, the world mourns the fact that one less white guy will be crowding the stage at future Republican debates. Jim Gilmore, we hardly knew ya.
Matt Ortega tells me that there just wasn’t enough action back in February to justify doing power rankings every week. Since then, things have picked up a bit, and it’s worth updating the rankings to see how the field looks. This may or may not return to being a weekly feature right now — depends on how much entertainment our Republican friends offer us.
Last time we looked, John McCain was on top of the world, while Fred Thompson was just a washed-up ex-lobbyist/actor playing that guy on Law & Order who sits behind a desk acting gruff and never actually doing anything. Now McCain is in freefall and Thompson is wandering around the country, acting gruff and pretending not to actually be doing anything. How things change.
1. Rudy Giuliani (2) — Leads the field in Q2 fundraising, is burning less cash than his major rivals, and tops polls both nationwide and in key states. And yet he’s losing ground.
2. Fred Thompson (N/A) — In striking distance of Giuliani without even “officially” campaigning — though the FEC might have something to say about what he’s been up to. We won’t know until much later whether he’ll be able to take advantage of his favorable early poll numbers; conservatives have great hopes for him, but he has stumbled a bit, and the dirt on him is starting to come out. Plus he looks ridiculous in frills.
3. Mitt Romney (3) — His skillful early organization is continuing to pay off. He’s got leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he just won a Young Republican straw poll by deftly expanding the boundaries of the meaning of the word ”young.” But his fundraising has fallen off, his burn rate has climbed, the Christian right may be turning on him, and he’s an also-ran in the national polls. Even if he does win Iowa and New Hampshire, will it be enough?
4. John McCain (1) — It’s all gone pear-shaped for the former frontrunner. Never quite trusted by the conservative base, McCain’s sponsorship of the immigration bill may prove fatal to his hopes for the nomination. His second-quarter fundraising was catastrophic; now he’s slashing his payroll, decimating his campaign organization and prompting the “McCain Death Watch.” It’s not over for him yet, but a recovery looks unlikely.
5. Sam Brownback (4) — While he’s down from his February ranking, things are actually looking up for Brownback lately. With a recent show of support from 50 Iowa Christian right leaders, he’s poised to pick up support from social conservatives disenchanted with the frontrunners.
6. Tom Tancredo (9) — His anti-immigrant message resonates with a riled-up base, and it sounds like he’s been doing well at candidates’ forums.
7. Mike Huckabee (5) — The most talented politician in the Republican field, with a message that could remake evangelicals as a political force. Yet the fiscal conservatives don’t trust him and he can’t raise money to save his life. His showing in Ames may determine his fate.
8. Ron Paul (8) — More cash on hand than John McCain. And a kick-ass van.
9. Duncan Hunter (7) — He got the Ann Coulter endorsement, which is nice for him.
10. Tommy Thompson (6) — Midwestern governor with some name recognition. Utterly generic, and soon to be irrelevant.
11. James Gilmore (10) — Not to be confused with David Gilmour.
12. John Cox (11) — You shot who in the what now?
Two statewide polls conducted by Public Policy Polling find Fred Thompson extremely strong in early primary and caucus states. Pollster has the goods.
South Carolina:
Among 630 Republicans in South Carolina, Thompson (at 27%) leads Romney (16%), McCain (15%), Giuliani (14%), and Gingrich (11%) in a statewide primary.
Iowa:
Among 774 Republicans in Iowa, former Gov. Mitt Romney (at 31%) leads former Sen. Fred Thompson (15%), former Speaker Newt Gingrich (10%), Sen. John McCain (9%), and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (8%) in a statewide caucus.
In addition, a new national GOP primary poll conducted by Insider Advantage finds Fred Thompson in second place among all GOP candidates, behind only Rudy Giuliani (although Thompson, Romney and McCain are all within the 3% margin of error.)
Giuliani - 28%
(Fred) Thompson -19%
Romney - 17%
McCain -16%
Huckabee- 4%
Brownback -3%
Hunter- 2%
Paul – 2%
Gilmore – 1%
Undecided/Don’t Know -8%
The poll surveyed 1,000 registered Republicans nationwide on May 30th & 31st (crosstabs here.)
These polls are the first to be conducted entirely on or since last Wednesday when it was revealed that Thompson would be taking official steps toward entering the race.
Former Virginia governor Jim “1%” Gilmore parlayed his “Rudy McRomney” stump speech line into a much coveted Sunday morning spot with George Stephanopoulos yesterday. In his appearance Gilmore continued to hit his main theme that:
The three people who have gotten themselves up into the eyes of the media and therefore continue to get their poll numbers up are not conservative candidates.
Gilmore says that HE is the one true “consistent conservative” in the race and in his campaign web video even channels a certain former presidential primary insurgent by saying:
I will represent the Republican wing of the Republican Party.
But interestingly, what struck me about his responses to Stephanopoulos’s questions about immigration and Iraq was just how relatively moderate he is. On one hand Gilmore’s views are firmly within the spectrum of most Republican primary voters: he opposes “amnesty,” as he calls a path to citizenship and is against a withdrawal from Iraq anytime soon. But as he elaborates on his views a sort of complex pragmatism emerges. For example, Gilmore opposes a “Berlin wall along the southern border” and advocates for a guest worker program rather than bussing the illegal immigrants who are already here back to their home countries. And on Iraq, Gilmore sounds downright Paulian when he speaks about Iraq in terms of the rising anger across the world such as in Iran, between the Shia and Sunnis, between Israel and the Palestinians, etc. It’s an anger, he says, that US foreign policy has long ignored.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to vote for the guy or anything but I do have an idea for a new campaign slogan for him:
Jim Gilmore: the only sane one.
Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota has spent the last four months recovering from a brain hemorrhage. He’s up for reelection in 2008 and his campaign reported receipts of over $660,000 for the first quarter of 2006, despite being focused entirely on recovering from his illness.
Why do I bring up a Democratic Senate campaign’s fundraising results, when I spend most of my time talking about the GOP presidential primary? Only because Johnson beat almost half of the serious Republican candidates in terms of money raised from his hospital bed.
Mike Huckabee $500,000
Duncan Hunter $500,000
Tommy Thompson $386,795
Jim Gilmore $200,000
Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Brownback, and Tom Tancredo all surpassed Johnson, who spent the entire quarter recovering from a brain hemorrhage. And is running for a Senate seat in South Dakota. Obviously I’m getting at the fact that out-raising Johnson is not impressive. Whereas Johnson out-raising allegedly legitimate Republican candidates is impressive. And embarrassing if you’re one of the four Republican contenders that he out-raised.
If four Democratic contenders for their party’s nomination where beat out by a Republican incumbent from a tiny state who spent the quarter in the hospital, you know the media would immediately question the seriousness of their campaigns. Normally I’d take issue with that, but in this cycle with top candidates pulling in over $20 million, it’s hard to envision someone with half a million dollars in receipts being able to mount a serious challenge. Romney has forty times as much money as Huckabee and Hunter and over 100 times as much cash as Jim Gilmore. Money isn’t all that counts in elections, but you have to at least be able to pay for basic campaign operations to make up the money gap.
The bottom half of the Republican field’s fundraising capacities is dangerously close to laughable. I don’t know whether it is a result of Huckabee, Hunter, Thompson and Gilmore’s failures as candidates, a lack of oxygen thanks to the top tier, a lack of interest in the election by GOP donors, or a combination of all three. The next quarter may see the addition of Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich to the field, so the fundraising picture may be no more positive for this cohort in three months.
Technorati Tags: Duncan Hunter, fundraising, James Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Tim Johnson, Tommy Thompson
There’s some activity with the field of Republican candidates on the web.
Arizona Senator John McCain re-launched his exploratory committee website at www.johnmccain.com and with added features and several more videos. (Including the required homage to President Ronald Reagan.) Also, if you cursor over the three panels toward the bottom of the page, you get an annoying and repeated messages from the senator himself.
McCain, in an attempt to reach the conservative online activists, completely ripped off MySpace with his online connecting tool, McCainSpace. (Sounds a little “nose in the air,” don’t you think?)
And finally, the most laughable addition is on McCain’s “Undecided?” page where he tries to get skeptical conservatives off the fence and join him. See the highlighted text in the attached image below.
Apparently McCain thinks conservatives were born yesterday.
Also on the web, Jim Gilmore’s campaign! It’s alive!
After a month absence from, well, everything, the former Virginia Governor launched his exploratory committee website this week at www.gilmoreforpresident.com, showing the first sign of life from his campaign in weeks.
Meanwhile, crickets continue to chirp at the online home of Congressman Ron Paul (R-Surfside, Tex.). Though, don’t sweat, “this website will be completed soon.” Yet, Paul continues to lead the Republicans in MySpace friends, according to the recently launched techPresident, a project of Personal Democracy Forum.
California Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine, Calif.) retooled his campaign website at www.gohunter08.com with a more sleek appearance. Hunter continues to include Iraq in the War on Terror. (Hat tip: Michael Turk, techPresident)
Jim Gilmore, alleged presidential candidate, was sighted this weekend in New Hampshire wooing members of the NH GOP at their annual meeting.
Gilmore has been AWOL (or would it be MIA?) pretty much since he announced the formation of his presidential exploratory committee. I’ve been anxiously awaiting either the launch of his PEC’s website (none exists) or, at least, an update from DraftGilmore.org, which hasn’t been changed since January 9th when Gilmore formed his PEC. Worse BlogsForGilmore, as linked from the Draft site, remains an empty page parked at GoDaddy.com.Giuliani didn’t have the GOP activists to himself. Two candidates who recently announced forming Presidential exploratory committees — Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore — offered a free lunch to delegates once the Republican meeting adjourned. Sen. John McCain’s supporters advertised their own luncheon.
But, hey, Gilmore was in New Hampshire this weekend, so maybe he’s giving this whole “campaigning” thing a shot after all.
Technorati Tags: James Gilmore
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