When pressed to explain how he could possibly win the Republican nomination, Gilmore became perhaps the first presidential candidate in history to lay out a path to victory that ends in Rhode Island.

“I think you start here and you go into South Carolina where as a fellow Southerner I have some affinity with the votes [sic] there,” Gilmore said. “Then we come back to my home state of Virginia, and then we see where we are with the other states as well. But I think we’re going to compete in Rhode Island, too. We have a lot of friends up there that are trying to help us in Rhode Island. Then I think we see where we are.”

Ultimately, Gilmore seemed to hope that the race would be pushed all the way to a contested Republican National Convention, where he would mysteriously emerge as the nominee, despite the fact that many of the delegates probably barely know he still exists, much less that he is running for president.

Before Gilmore decided to cut his losses Friday, there was a running joke on Twitter, after every Republican presidential candidate dropped out of the race, that Gilmore was somewhere smiling as he moved one step closer to victory, hands clasped in Machiavellian glee. The conceit was, of course, absurd. Though Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker failed to win the Republican nomination, they were at least in the conversation at some point. Gilmore seemed to be the last person to realize that he never had a chance.