When you cannot even raise half-a-million dollars in six months, you simply need to get out of the race. What may sound harsh, but dollars are a practical measure of the breadth and depth of support for a candidate. As a result, Jim Gilmore has realized that he needs to be out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

Former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III ended his long-shot Republican presidential campaign yesterday, saying he was unable to raise enough money to communicate his conservative vision to Americans. He held out the possibility, however, that he might soon run for public office again in Virginia.

Gilmore, the son of a butcher who had improbably risen to become a local prosecutor, a state attorney general and a governor of Virginia, dropped out of the crowded GOP primary field a day before reporting that he had raised $211,000 between April and June.

Since January, he has raised $381,000, while his rivals have collected tens of millions of dollars.

"You have to build a large organization of people who will raise money for you. That takes years to develop," Gilmore said yesterday. "While the other candidates are raising tens of millions, we were raising hundreds of thousands. We would have to change that paradigm to stay in this race."

My only question is why Gilmore thought he had a chance of getting the nomination in the first place.