Black Velvet Bruce Li has a great summary of Jim Gilmore’s policy positions and failed attempts in political planning to endow him with the senate seat by some kind of predestined entitlement.

While Jim Gilmore is widely respected among Republicans in Virginia, and I believe with pretty good reason, he’s not someone who has been able to build a base of fierce loyalists since leaving the Governor’s mansion.  His race for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, marred by sparsely-attended press conferences, little attention from the public, and a solidly mediocre performance on the campaign trail lead him to be the very first to drop out of that race.  Not long after giving up there, he switched gears to run for the United States Senate upon the retirement of Senator John Warner, and was immediately crowned the almost-certain nominee who would face off against Mark Warner, especially after derailing Tom Davis.  The party establishment lined up behind him early on, and all the conventional wisdom solidified around the idea that Gilmore was the guy.

Republican Party conventions are not an easy thing to entirely control, however.  Utterly dominated by politically active conservatives, it is a perfect place for someone who might connect very well with these activists but who may not be highly regarded by the establishment to mount an insurgent campaign and throw such carefully laid plans into complete disarray.  It doesn’t take a whole lot of money to win a convention.  Direct mail  and robocalls are nearly useless.  This is a ground game of recruiting convention delegates and lobbying those registered, something the mainstream media cannot observe or well understand, where passion and energy completely dominates the equation.  While Gilmore wanted a convention, he’s not really that much of a convention kind of guy.  But Bob Marshall absolutely is, and now Gilmore’s anticipated coronation is not only in doubt, I think it’s almost a foregone conclusion at this point.

Visit Black Velvet Bruce Li for the rest of this great commentary.

The WaPo had a great round up here citing Gilmore so broke that he had to loan his own campaign $50k to sustain itself.

“All the evidence on fundraising suggests that Gilmore has lost his touch,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, who noted that Gilmore was known as a proficient fundraiser when he was attorney general and governor during the mid-1990s. “Where is the money? It’s not there, and it’s not going to be there.”

Bob Marshall remains solvent and appears to be destroying Gilmore on the ground based on surveys I’ve taken myself across the district: 

Out of 120 people called, 85 said they were firmly behind Marshall, 31 would vote for Gilmore and 4 said things I can’t repeat before I finished my questions. 

My apologies to Mrs. Livingston for calling twice and waking her up at 3pm.

As far as I can tell, money is not what wins party elections when you have a stronger candidate on national borders, life, constitutional understanding, and unwavering opposition to tax hikes and unfunded mandates.

I dont’ think it’s any surprise that we Republicans are looking at a, how shall I say this, “tough” election year. In fact, we are probably going to have our heads handed to us on a platter on election day.  If you believe it’s an unpopular president, an unpopular war, high gas prices, plummeting home prices, etc. you’re right….but I believe these are symptoms.  The real disease is much easier to grasp:  after taking power, we forgot to LISTEN to the patient!  We forgot to listen to the American people.  Our society is changing.  Dynamic societies do, yet we still cling to the ideas and campaign slogans of twenty to thirty years ago.  Labels like “tax and spend”, “fiscal conservative”, and “liberal” are sooooo yesterday that they are the equivalent of polyester leisure suits and Nehru jackets!  Remember them?  If you’re middle aged like me you do, but if you’re the ever increasing number of young voters you probably don’t.  Therein lies the problem for the Republican Party.  Therein lies our return to political relevance and from political exile.  Since the heady days of the Reagan Revolution, the USA and the American people have undergone tremendous social and economic change, yet we Republicans have not fully recognized it.  If you look at nearly every social indicator of progress, we are losing ground.  Our public education system is falling behind while the costs keep rising.  We are taxed more yet we receive less. Millions of illegals pour across our borders each year putting stress on social services you and I pay for while truly needy American citizens are denied those same services.  More and more national treasure is diverted away from helping the many to enriching the few who don’t need help in the first place.  Need I go into the cost of health care if you’re lucky enough to have insurance or saving for retirement?  I didn’t think so.  Slogans like “fiscal conservative” and “family values” don’t carry weight anymore because they don’t translate to anything meaningful to the typical American.  People want action, not slogans!  I would like to substitute the old slogans with a very simple one:  ”Vote Republican.  We will see you get your money’s worth from government.”  That being our vision, we can begin to deliver the goods the American people want while staying true to our core principles of fiscal discipline, individual accountability, love of country, etc.  It also recognizes the fact that as society changes, the Republican Party accepts it and adapts to it.  So, instead of simply being for “change”, Republicans can legitimately lay claim to working for “improvement” by making sure the American people get their money’s worth from government be it health care, better education, more secure retirement, you name it.  It offers hope, and that’s what people vote for.  For those readers who may want to brand me a RINO, I ask you to consider this point:  The United States is a republic, and we the people are “the boss” while elected officials are “the hired help”.  Any employee who keeps telling the boss s/he can’t give him/her what s/he asks for is not going to be an employee very long.  In adapting to the wishes of the American people, we are not betraying our Constitution or our country.  We are reacquainting ourselves to a fundamental tenet of our Constitution that the government serves with the “consent of the governed”.  What better way to serve our country and our public than delivering the services they want as efficiently and effectively as possible.  In short, giving the American people their money’s worth.  By doing that, we emphasize the “Republic” in Republican.  If you still doubt this, I ask you to consider the political rebirth of the Conservative Party in Great Britain after being out of power 11 years.  They are well on their way to recapturing the leadership of that country, and it’s because they started listening to the people.  They now accept the people want to keep things like their national health service but know they want it working better.  If any political party can deliver goods and services at such a level the governed believe they’re getting their money’s worth, that party will be in power for a long, long time.  As one Republican, I ask we all huddle together to adopt this mantra then systematically, methodically begin carrying it through.  Would anyone care to join me?

By now we’ve learned of Senator Ted Kennedy’s malignant brain tumor.  From all indications, it is likely terminal meaning the senator is now staring directly at death.  As our political leaders fight back the tears to sing Kennedy’s praises, I can’t help thinking about a young person who died tragically approximately forty years ago.  Unlike Kennedy, she was not born into a politically “royal” family.  She did not have all the advantages and privileges of wealth nor did she go to the finest schools.  Unlike Kennedy who married twice and has children and grandchildren, this young lady never married at all.  Yet her destiny and Kennedy’s were intertwined since the day she died nearly forty years ago.  Younger bloggers may have never heard of this young lady, but us middle aged “old geezers”  do.  I’m talking about Mary Jo Kopeckni, a Kennedy campaign aide who drowned when the car she was riding in and the senator was driving careened off a narrow road in Martha’s Vineyard and plunged into seawater just deep enough to completely submerge the car.  No one can tell us what Mary Jo’s  last thoughts were as she slipped from this life into the next or what it was like to comfort her.  No one can say if she suffered an agonizingly slow death or a mercifully quick one.  You see, she and Kennedy were the only two people in that car, and Kennedy left her.  Mary Jo drowned in cold, jet black sea water, unable to free herself.  Kennedy was nowhere to be found because he abandoned her.  Mary Jo died alone.  As his malignancy slowly claims him, Senator Kennedy will likely spend his last days with his family and friends; a luxury Mary Jo was denied.  When Senator Kennedy passes, no doubt he will be heralded and mourned by many unlike Mary Jo, whose name is but a footnote in Kennedy’s biography, and to this day mourned only by her parents, family, and friends.  Kennedy and Mary Jo came from very different backgrounds, led very different lives, but death equalizes us all.  I wonder what the “lion of the senate” will say to her when their paths cross in the afterlife?  I wonder what he can say.