Christine Todd Whitman's new book is scheduled to hit the shelves near the inauguration, to maximize coverage of its message: Bush's abandonment of moderates is ruining the Republican party.
The Washington Post
reports that Whitman's book "touts the importance of moderates to the future of the Republican Party and flays Bush and his team for ignoring the country's middle."
Yet another former Bush cabinet member flailing against him. Good! More below.
Whitman indicts the Rove strategy, even if it did lead to short-term success:
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 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."
She also, in essence, accuses Rove of -- surprise of surprises! -- dishonesty:
Whitman writes that after meeting with the president-elect at a hotel suite in Washington, she had no doubt that Bush "wanted a strong environmental record to be part of both his agenda and his legacy."
"The belief was reinforced when Karl Rove told me after that meeting that I would be one of just three cabinet officers who would help determine whether the president would be reelected," she writes. "I took Rove to mean that the work I would do in building a strong record on the environment would help the president build on his base by attracting moderate swing voters. As it turned out, I don't seem to have understood Karl correctly."
Interestingly, her book tour will take her to D.C., New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California -- but no red states. C'mon Christie -- cross over to this side!