Profile of a Former Candidate: Jim Gilmore

Jim Gilmore recently announced that he was ending his presidential campaign. Poor poll results and limited funds had suggested Gilmore's road to the White House would be a difficult one from the very beginning, but when emergency eye surgery disrupted his July campaign, Gilmore's uphill climb got steeper still. With this in mind, it is not surprising that Gilmore dropped out of the race; I, for one, will miss what the former governor of Virginia brought to the table.

Few, if any, Republican presidential candidates would hesitate to call themselves "conservative," but Jim Gilmore aggressively claimed himself to be the only true conservative in the race and he derisively referred to the Republican frontrunners collectively as "Rudy McRomney" for they were, to Gilmore at least, indistinguishable because of their liberal tendencies. In practice, Gilmore rarely espoused the most extreme point of view on any issue -- perhaps that is a part of what he considers to be true conservatism. He was a candidate who was pro-life, but believed abortion should be legal during the first eight weeks of pregnancy. He was a candidate that emphasized the importance of border security, but stressed the rule of law as the basic rationale behind the need for increased security and promised secure borders both to the south and the north. He was a candidate who unabashedly supported the war in Iraq, yet in June dared to express that it was time to start reducing the number of American troops on the ground. There are some presidential candidates that scare me more than a little bit -- even a few of the ones I like -- but Gilmore never scared me because his campaign was relatively moderate. Perhaps part of the problem with Gilmore's campaign is that he was not able to put forth a single issue upon which to run on, but at least he avoided the demagoguery of a Giuliani or an Edwards.

Jim Gilmore's greatest Internet moment probably came with the posting of this video, in which Gilmore spoke of his support for the 1st, 2nd, and 3d amendments and asked YouTube viewers to bring up specific examples of how those amendments were under threat. I find it a little sad that this video garnered hundreds of thousands of views while Gilmore's other campaign videos on YouTube received very little attention; it was as if the YouTube audience was mainly interested in the chance to respond to a candidate rather than in listening to one. The video responses, as it turned out, almost entirely ignored Gilmore's actual request so this was not an entirely successful foray into the digital realm, but it did show authoritatively that even lesser known candidates could gain a huge audience online if they approached the online community in an effective manner.