OUR VIEW: Even GOP has little passion for Gilmore

» SUMMARY: Given his pathetic poll numbers and lack of campaign money, Republicans can’t be too thrilled with Jim Gilmore’s Senate chances vs. Mark Warner.

It’s mind-boggling to think that a Republican in (relatively) red Virginia could be losing by 25 percentage points in a statewide race for U.S. Senate.

But that’s exactly the predicament that faces former governor Jim Gilmore, who trails another former governor — Democrat Mark Warner — by a huge margin in the polls.

After decades of leaning to the right, state voters now seem to be pretty split - at least on the presidential level. Hard-charging Democrats have won the past two gubernatorial elections and already have one senator in office, but even the most optimistic party leaders know Virginia is still a long way from turning dark blue.

That’s why the initial success enjoyed by the Warner camp — and on the flip side, the miserable showing by Gilmore — is so hard to fathom.

Consider that Warner leads Gilmore by a whopping 57 to 32 percent in a recent survey by Public Policy Polling; a poll by Rasmussen puts it at 57 to 34 and gives Warner a 91 percent chance of winning November’s election.

To put those numbers into perspective, the same polls have Barack Obama and John McCain in a virtual dead heat. Another poll has 43 percent of voters still selecting George “Macaca” Allen over Jim Webb (45 percent) in a hypothetical redo of the 2006 Senate race.

Adding insult to injury, Warner’s campaign has about $5 million in the bank to Gilmore’s $116,000.

With these clouds hanging over him, Gilmore trudged into Culpeper for the final stop of his “Working Families Tour” Wednesday night at Pepper’s Grill. The crowd that greeted him numbered about 12.

While it might not be completely accurate to say these are grim days for the Republican Party in Virginia, it wouldn’t be far from the truth — it’s certainly that way in at least one high-profile race.

The GOP, it seems, has conceded defeat.