DRUDGE: BUSH BASH BOOK BURSTS IN TIME FOR INAUGURAL

Drudge Report ^ | SUN JAN 02, 2005 | Matt Drudge

[West Coast Conservative]

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JAN 02, 2005 18:00:00 ET XXXXX

BUSH BASH BOOK BURSTS IN TIME FOR INAUGURAL

Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who was President Bush's first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has written a book that touts the importance of moderates to the future of the Republican Party and flays Bush and his team for ignoring the country's middle.

Whitman charges on Page 3 that Bush's three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection, the WASHINGTON POST reports in coming editions, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE.

IT'S MY PARTY TOO: THE BATTLE FOR THE HEART OF THE GOP AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA streets during inauguration week, insuring heavy media coverage

"The numbers show that while the president certainly did energize his political base, the red state/blue state map changed barely at all, suggesting that he had missed an opportunity to significantly broaden his support in the most populous areas of the country," Whitman writes. "The Karl Rove strategy to focus so rigorously on the narrow conservative base won the day, but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party."

Whitman details her many scars and frustrations in dealing with what she calls the "antiregulatory lobbyists and extreme antigovernment ideologues" that she suggests hold too much sway over the Republican party.

Developing...

[Incorrigible]

Shut up Christie!

Your lame Far Hills elitism has really become a liability.

I liked you in your first term as Governor but you really showed your RINO colors with your court appointments in your second term and the debt tricks you played.

You would have gone down in ignominy in NJ had you finished your second term so you should be thanking President Bush for lifting you out of New Jersey before you were tarred and feathered.

Thanks to you we have Frank Lautenberg in the Senate instead of Doug Forester. We spend oodles of money on Abbot district schools with nothing to show for it. And to top it off, you defied the will of the people who wanted parental notification of our daughters having abortions.

Oh, and the picture of you patting down that perp with the big silly grin on your face was real nice too.

Please just shut up and go watch movies in your basement with the wide screen TV and let the administration do the job we want them to do.

[af_vet_1981]

Pop Quiz:

Which Republican Governor failed to win reelection ?

[somemoreequalthanothers]

The democrats are still much much worse than we are, but I miss the Contract With America days. I think congressional term limits will have to come before spending can be reduced, or at least slowed the hell down.

[DoctorMichael]

Her stint at the EPA was ineffectual and she left, much like o'Neil at Treasury, by being given an Bush-insider's, smiling, faux pat-on-the-back IMHO.

Maybe she's just jealous she didn't get the Medal of Freedom from the Bush Administration like Tenet at CIA.

[eno_]

"The Karl Rove strategy to focus so rigorously on the narrow conservative base won the day, but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party."

Dole/Whitman in 2008. Yeah... that'll work.

[Torie]

The guy from New Hampshire this time. Whitman did win reelection when she ran, barely. She was in hostile territory.

[Bommer]

Love the subtitle "Taking back the Republican party" From what and to what? She was kicked out because she is an idiot!

[LdSentinal]

I'm surprised that she's complaining since she was a moderate in the Tom Kean Sr. mode during her first administration and she barely won her re-election in 1997 against a then unknown Jim McGreevey.

Of course, she blames Newt Gingrich for her narrow win, but Bush was not about the adopt a flawed Kyoto treaty with its' obvious flaws.

[blue-duncan]

That's Freedom of Screed.

[wolfpat]

I'm waiting for someone like her to call on liberals to be more moderate.

They don't think they need to be more moderate. They think they only need to talk louder.

[somemoreequalthanothers]

I was pretty high on her in the beginning too.
A lesson learned.

[Burlem]

Damn, I thought our president was a moderate.. Where is he too conservative? In some ways he is too liberal for me, like immigation.

[Diddle E. Squat]

Perhaps presidential ambition? If Giuliani decides not to run, she might could fill a moderate vacuum of semi-interesting candidates with name-recognition and some crossover appeal(at least in her mind). McCain is too much a hothead, Hagel's an ass, so hey, why not give it a shot? Or maybe even banking on a Giuliani win, and positioning as a followup in 2016, she's not terribly old, right?

[Eva]

The title should be, It's my Party Too, and I'll cry if I want to (because I got fired).

[Gunslingr3]

Clinton never got 50% of the vote,

She never suggested he did.

Bush got more votes than anyone in history. So he must be doing something wrong.

There were more people in the country when Bush was elected. The 'most votes in history' stat is stupid. Just stupid. Her point was that Bush won his re-election with the narrowest margin in history. Either you don't understand what that means (so you reference the absolute number of votes), or you do understand and seek to obfuscate (referencing Clinton's percentage total (NOT his margin of victory) in a three-way race).

[cubreporter]

Sour grapes Christie. No future in politics. Lost her job with the Bush Administration. Sour Grapes Christie.

[GeronL]

But its meaningless.

[Coleus]

Well Said, 

and we'll be paying for her errors for many years through her spending, debts and court appointments.  She's nothing more than a sanctimonious witch who wishes she were a man.

Former NJ Governor/EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and aides start consulting firm

Whitman says in new book that catering to GOP's far-right wing will hurt party

A 1996 photograph of New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman frisking a black man during a drug sweep in Camden shows the great strides white women have made in cracking the so-called 'Old Boys Network.'

[GeronL]

Its just like making the rules after the game is over.

[Torie]

I don't think Whitman is very well positioned to win any GOP presidential primary anywhere, including NJ. Mid Atlantic aristocrats who display a cultural distaste for fly over country, and lack a down to earth touch, simply are not very appealing, unless they hare unique charisma, or awesome personal accomplishments, and Whitman has neither.