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

By Dana Milbank

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

The former 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. . . .

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2005Apr1.html

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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 if she did want to win, she wouldn't wimp out or "demur" when asked to name names and give concrete examples. She wants the number 2 spot on someone's ticket in 2008 as the "moderate" voice that will balance out the extreme candidate and keep the Republicans together for another election cycle.

I know I see every Republican move as cynical manipulation, but dammit if I wasn't so right every time, I'd try to look at it another way.

"Look! We're self-critical." It's bu**sh**.

In other words, who cares what you think?

:headbang:
rocknation