It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America

by Christine Todd Whitman

Book Overview

The Republican party is embroiled in a heated and high-stakes battle between its far-right and moderate wings-with conservatives declaring open warfare on the moderates who ask themselves "Whatever... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143036653
• ISBN13: 9780143036654
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 247 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A needed insight into bringing back centrist politics to the GOP

Before the 1990's, many of the "Blue States" voted Republican and had Republican Governors, mayors, etc. Christie Todd Whitman correctly points out that the Republican party can only survive by moving to the center. She is right that the GOP needs to reach out to African-Americans and bring other groups into the GOP. Those who disagree should look at how conservative wedge issues such as the Gay marriage ban fail to pass Congress. Mrs. Whitman calls for consenus building and compromise on many issues. She adds to the debate over the future of the GOP.

A woman of substance

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I feel Ms. Whitman offers ideas and views that touch all Americans. I happen to be a Democrat, but I was enlightened by her discussion of the underlying philosophies that she holds dear. I learned a great deal. I felt we could see eye to eye on many pertinent issues in todays political spectrum. She would be an excellent candidate for higher office. She seems to be a common sense thinker amongst a gaggle of social conservatives with angry agendas. I have passed my book onto many other friends who are Democrats and also Republicans. She is a uniter, not a divider, unlike our President.

A Broader Party - We Need The Moderates Too

This is the author's attempt to explain the need for moderation in the Republican as well as in the Democratic party. Both parties, especially the Republicans, have been moving away from the center which is polarizing the Country. So many moderates in the middle of the political spectrum have no place to go in either party. The conservative Republicans could not have won without the support of the moderate Republicans. Moderate Republicans fully deserve to be represented by the party and to have their views respected.

Well writen and understandable

My father comes from Whitmans wing of the Republican Party which is why he voted for the Democratic ticket this time around because Bush and Cheney are just way neo-conservative. Governor Whitman writes with a clear understanding of the issues and a true argument for her party. She offers her ideas about what the Republican Party was and how it needs to find its moderate roots again. She is someone who was a good governor for New Jersey and someone who has fought for a more moderate/centrist agenda for her party. I would push anyone to read this book.

Stephen King, move over! THIS is a scary book!

Christine Todd Whitman's sober but eminently readable short book is a clarion call to moderates and true Republican conservatives alike, and, as such, should be warmly welcomed by liberals as well. In genial, accessible and melifluous prose, Governor Whitman reveals her experiences as a life-long Republican, both in the Governor's office in New Jersey, and as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency during much of President Baby Bush's first term in office. And much of what she has to say is truly chilling. Is this a scary book? You bet it is. If you have any interest in modern American politics, put down your Stephen King and read Whitman's assessment of her party's descent into kowtowing to the hard right wing. It's a whole lot more frightening. Take, for example, her chapter on abortion, entitled The Party Within The Party. As she delinates her real position, as opposed to the position on the issue ascribed to her by the hard right wing of her political party, she offers a great deal of information about the drift rightward of her party, and the growing influence of the hard-liners, who have, she contends, left any connection with the bedrock values of the party to which they're laying claim, indulging instead in intrusive, and unconstitutional, legislation in order to further their social agenda. She says: "Frankly, it seemed to me at the time (and still does today) that their failure to take the path I had laid out suggested that they were more interested in having an issue than in saving the lives of unborn children." (p.87) There is a bit of Queen Elizabeth I of England's political realism in Whimans's restrained and balanced approach, and I suspect that as distasteful to her as is the hard right's ideology, its lack of political flexibility and unwillingness to bend in the interests of getting the job accomplished are equally unappealing to her. The intent of her book is to reunify her party along the lines that historically bound it: smaller, and accountable, government, strong defense, less intrusion into people's lives by governmental legislation and lower taxes. There has been criticism from the left about her unwillingness to tell all, and her reluctance to condemn the worst aspects of her party, the current President in particular. As a life-long liberal, and the child of children of Democrats, while I sympathize wholeheartly with that perspective, I also understand that the point of her book is not to 'tell all' in the vein of Andrew Morton's biography of Princess Diana. The point here is to educate, elucidate and illuminate, not sink to trashing the people who made her political experiences unpleasant. I respect her reluctance to come across as a crybaby, which would have pleased my liberal friends, no doubt, but would not have accomplished her intent, which is to call her party back from the nether regions into which it has sunk. She is asking for political moderation so that in concert with other mo