Ed Gillespie

I don't want to be disrespectful of the president of the United States, but as a political person, one of the things I appreciated about this president, in the past year especially, is he is a fantastic candidate.

The fact is that we as a party at the Republican National Committee registered 3.4 million new voters in the past two years and brought them into the political process. The president won by 3.5 million votes.

We are seeing at the Republican National Committee a phenomenon that is worth noting this week; maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday, we will have a million first time donors since the president took office.

I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics.

So I think that our foreign policy, the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.

They do believe that if we do not wage this war against terror in places like Baghdad and Kabul, we are more likely to have it waged in Baltimore and Kansas.

If you're a governor of a big state, people sense your presence a little bit, even your fellow governors.

People like passion in politics.

I do not believe the American people are going to confuse hatred for passion.

I believe we're the party of small business.

I don't believe we're the party of big business.

Well, my wife, Cathy Gillespie, worked for Joe Barton, who was running for Congress in 1984.