Jim Gilmore for President

 

Exclusive Interview With Gov. Jim Gilmore by Human Events - HUMAN EVENTS :

"I’m already a conservative and always have been. My record’s as clear as crystal and I’m not going to shift now so that I can get elected President. I am the real thing and that’s what I am …and I don’t think it costs much money to do that."

So said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore in his recent interview with the editors of Human Events, the leading national conservative weekly newspaper.

The interview goes into particular depth on two issues of interest to most conservatives - taxes and protection of the unborn - as well as broader philosphical concerns. He also comments on the three currently leading candidates for the GOP nomination - US Sen. John McCain, former mayor Rudy Giuliani and former governor Mitt Romney. There is no doubt that Jim Gilmore is the real conservative in that field.

In the couse of the interview, he mentions that his membership in the Republican Party dates back to 1967. That was when I first met Jim Gilmore. We both entered the University of Virginia that year, both joined the University Republican Club, and both were appointed dorm captains. We worked on Republican campaigns in the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County and attended senior party, Young Republican and College Republican meetings and conventions all over Virginia.

I knew Jim Gilmore then, and later, as a man of great intellect, sound conservative principles, enormous energy and ambition. Now, ambition is one of those qualitites that is neither a virtue nor a vice per se but can be judged only in relation to the objects toward which it is directed. Jim put that ambition to work in pursuit of those sound conservative principles I mentioned.

In 1971, when Jim took his degree on time (I was always more interested in other things than studying and took a longer route to my BA), he wouldn't settle for a second-tier law school and enlisted in the US Army where he was trained in intelligence and served as a non-commissioned officer. When he returned from army service in Germany in 1974 he realized his dream of admittance to the law school at the University of Virginia. But because he came in late, he had not been able to arrange for housing and he lived at the Young Republican House at UVa.

I was in residence at the YR House myself to complete my last year of study. Another roommate was a first-year law student who had just taken his BA at the University, Bill Hurd. Seeking quieter quarters where they could study, the three of us shared apartments each of the next two years. So, during three years of living together, I got to know Jim very well indeed. This was also the period when Jim was courting his future wife, the lovely Roxane, and I had the great privilege of being a member of the wedding.

Although I have only seen Jim a few times in the intervening years (the last, I think, was in 1988) my respect for him is undiminished. I will do whatever is in my poor power to assist his campaign for the Republican nomination and, I hope, the presidency itself in 2008.

You can learn more about Jim Gilmore by visiting his campaign website.