Christie Whitman: Former N.J. governor and Bush Cabinet member says religious extremists have taken over GOP & the administration in which she served.

In a 2-1-05 post entitled "A National Party No More" & "It's My Party Too." - "Maybe these two former governors can get together and figure this stuff out for us," I wrote in part:

In a 8-23-05 post entitled "But will you love me tomorrow? -- GOP Centrists to Speak at [Republican] Convention, but Will They Be Heard?," I quoted former New Jersey governor Christie Whitman and then head of the E.P.A. under Bush as follows:

"'If [Bush] loses, it is an absolute validation of the fact that you cannot be a national party if you are excluding people.'''

"Ms. Whitman is writing a book titled 'It's My Party Too.'

"Sen. Miller's 'A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat,' says the Demo's have veered too far to the left."Ms. Whitman's will say the GOP has veered too far to the right."

Maybe these two former governors can get together and figure this stuff out for us."
Ms. Whitman's political memoir "It's My Party Too" has just hit the newstands.

A firm believer in Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment -- "thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans" -- she does not blow out Cheney, Rove, etc..

But as expected, she is very clear about the hijacking of her beloved Republican Party by the "fundamentalists," the "social conservatives" and the "ideological zealots" whose views on abortion, race and other big social issues she battled tirelessly as governor of New Jersey.

This is a call to arms to the remaining moderates of the Eisenhower/Rockefeller school, and a timely reminder in this age of bitter ideological combat that there was once a Republican mainstream, before the mainstream flowed right.

Ms. Whitman gives Bush a pass, describing him as the "most socially conservative president of my lifetime," and portraying him as a victim of the fundamentalists, not their standard bearer, and a prisoner of bad advice and pressures from industry and the right-wingers on Capitol Hill.

And then shifting from Ms. Whitman, in the same 2-1-05 post, I wrote:

The years 2006 and 2008 can be the Democrats' chance to recover. Why?

Without acknowledging Zell Miller -- but agreeing with what he says in his book to the effect that much of America agrees that the party has veered too far to the left -- the party is veering to the middle.

But the GOP is Washington, like the GOP in Georgia, is forgetting for the moment that the pendulum is always swinging. Thus the GOP is not listening to Ms. Whitman's message that the GOP has veered too far to the right.

This and hubris will do them in. Our task at hand is to make it sooner rather than later.
_______________

Christie Whiteman is back in the news as she is now out promoting her book:

Whitman's Moderation in Opposition Won't Win Her Fight Within GOP

By Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
April 2, 2005

Christie Whitman has brought a knife to the political equivalent of a gunfight.

The former New Jersey governor and Bush Cabinet member is warning that religious extremists have taken over the Republican Party and the administration in which she served. It's a devastating critique -- or at least it would be if she backed it up with the sort of actions that would get the party to take her seriously.

But Christine Todd Whitman, last vestige of Rockefeller Republicanism, is too nice to do that. Prim and sensible as she sat in a green armchair and pitched her new book at a Council on Foreign Relations forum this week, Bush's former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency ruled out quitting the GOP or launching a presidential candidacy. She even refused -- politely, of course -- to identify a single one of the "social fundamentalists" she claims have hijacked the Republican Party.

"Why don't you share some of those names with us now?" the moderator, Harvard's Marvin Kalb, proposed.

"That's too easy," Whitman demurred. "It then becomes a spitting contest. . . ."

"I could name names, and then you could tell me if I'm wrong," Kalb offered. "Are you talking about someone like Senator Frist?"

"I don't find Senator Frist to be a social fundamentalist. . . ."

"Is it the leadership of the House? Is it Hastert? Is it DeLay?"

"I think it would be easier for them to say. . . ."

"But if they're as powerful as you say they are, shouldn't you name them?"

"That's too easy. . . ."

The exchange underscored the dilemma facing Whitman and other moderates -- all but extinct in the Republican Party -- as they try to reassert themselves. Whitman's book, "It's My Party Too," and her combative remarks in promoting it, are at odds with her demure actions. As Whitman herself put it Tuesday: "Centrists unfortunately are too moderate."

While moderates act in moderation, religious conservatives are strengthening their control of the GOP. The latest to say so is John C. Danforth, a former three-term Republican senator, former Bush ambassador to the United Nations, and Episcopal minister who presided over former president Ronald Reagan's funeral.

[Remarks by former senator John Danforth were the subject of a 3-31-05 post entitled "As a moderate GOP senator, I worried about size of federal deficit, not about effect of gays on institution of marriage. Now it is reversed."]

"Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians," he wrote in the New York Times on Wednesday. The party "has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement." Though antiabortion, Danforth wrote that GOP principles, such as limited government, free markets and internationalism, have "become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives."

Whitman made much the same argument Tuesday. She contrasted Bush with Reagan, who "didn't reach out in a way that indicated that there was no room for others." Now free of her administration yoke, she took issue with Bush on Iraq (a "go it alone" attitude has "done a great deal of damage to ourselves"), on the environment ("everything was seen through the prism of the reelection," she said, "and their base, pollsters were telling them, didn't care about the environment"). Her criticism of the right was even more pointed. She said people who blow up abortion clinics and kill abortionists have "become more and more active in the party."

But she is not using her leverage to move the party. She pronounced that "there is a time limit on the ability to keep trying to change from within" -- but she didn't say what that limit was. She said, "I want to see Republicans win, up to a point" -- but she didn't say what that point was.

Because Whitman poses no flight risk to the GOP, Bush's defenders are free to dismiss her. In a Los Angeles Times review, Matthew Scully, a former Bush speechwriter, called Whitman's book "airy blather," "platitudinous" and a combination of "insufferable snobbery" and "complete cluelessness." The conservative National Review, pointing to GOP gains in Congress and the White House, said her "claim of dire political consequences" was "at best, counterintuitive."

Whitman isn't offering much of a counterbalance to the fundamentalists. Her talk at the staid council drew all of 40 people and no television cameras; book sales were modest. It's true that Whitman is forming a PAC to boost moderates. But she has ruled out a run for the presidency or a third-party effort, opting to start a consulting business that took a chemical company as its first client.

Not for Whitman is the model of Zell Miller, the Democratic former senator who bitterly campaigned against his party's presidential nominee. Whitman, by contrast, repeatedly slipped into the first-person plural when talking about the administration, saying "we are engaged" on the environment and "we have bilateral and multilateral agreements."

Gently, Kalb probed Whitman's inconsistency. "That very party that you criticize, you helped get elected," reminding her that she was a state co-chairman of Bush's 2004 campaign. "I find an internal contradiction almost in what it is that you are trying to project as your political purpose and what it is that you're actually prepared to do or not do."

Replied Whitman: "I believe the president is the best person to lead the country at this time." Little wonder that the conservatives don't see her as a threat.