An ancient mastodon watches a comet approach—symbolizing the permanent extinction of the moderate, old-guard Republican Party.
End the hurting.
If you live in America under President Donald Trump, and are not part of his political cult, the chances are that you can identify strongly with those words. In large part, America is hurting today because Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a vehicle for corruptly enriching himself and imposing a wide range of policies that hurt ordinary Americans: illegally waging trade wars along with military ones, destroying democracy so he can always win elections, brutalizing immigrants and gutting environmental protections,destroying consumer protections and firing competent military officers to replace them with partisan loyalists.
Republicans weren't always like this. To understand what I mean, just look at the career of Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor (1994-2001) and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President George W. Bush (2001-2003).
When Christine Todd Whitman ran for governor the first time in 1993, her campaign aired a commercial that I remember to this day. Although I was eight years old, the son of a high school principal working in Plainfield, I vividly recall the 20-second spot because it communicated such a simple and powerful message. Whitman was famous in the state for being a moderate Republican who had helped lead the Committee for Responsible Government (later renamed the Republican Leadership Council) and nearly beating a popular Democrat, Sen. Bill Bradley, in the 1990 Senate election. As a precocious kid, I followed politics and understood that being a moderate Republican was, in general, a good thing. Then the ad made a powerful point: She would cut spending and taxes to create jobs and make it easier for New Jerseyans to keep their homes.
The ad was tough, to be sure, but it was also fair. As she did throughout her campaign, Whitman went out of her way to focus on balancing budgets, making life easier for her constituents — and behaving honorably. There were no low blows, no haymakers, no lies. Whitman criticized her Democratic opponent, Gov. James Florio, for his policies, in particular a $2.8 billion tax increase, but she focused on the issues. The final result was close — she won by roughly 1 percentage point and 26,000 votes — but she won, fair and square, by being honorable and issue-oriented.
Flash forward 33 years and Whitman doesn't recognize the Republican Party she once ran on. Indeed, she isn't even a part of it anymore. Speaking with this powerful former governor and influential EPA head for AlterNet, I learned about the third party she co-founded for people disaffected from both the Republicans and Democrats, as well as why she says she will likely never be a Republican again.
The ad that stuck with me had, as its slogan, "End the hurting." The catchphrase still applies one-third of a century later, albeit for very different reasons.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length.
How Trump turned the Republican Party into a cult.
ROZSA: You left the Republican Party in 2022 after a lifetime in it. When Donald Trump is no longer on the ballot or leading the party, is there a version of the GOP that you would consider rejoining?
WHITMAN: I don't see the party coming back to anything like where it was, because it's no longer a party. It's a cult, and it's hard to come back from that. And so I am a registered independent now.
ROZSA: I think that's an interesting point that you said, that it's a cult. Why did you describe the Republican Party as a cult?
WHITMAN: Because it doesn't have a platform that is agreed to by everyone. It's whatever Trump says you should believe at any particular time; then they switch, and that's what they believe. And that, to me, is the definition of a cult, not of a party. A party has to have a set of principles that guides it, and they have to be issue-oriented type of principles. And I don't see that in this Republican Party at all. I see: Whatever Trump believes in or says is important, that's what we will then believe in and say is important.
ROZSA: So when you were a Republican, what would you say were the defining principles of the party?
WHITMAN: Well, it used to believe in balanced budgets and engaged foreign policy, working closely with our allies. It was a party that worked with everyone to try to solve problems, starting from the ground up, not imposing things from the top down. It was, you know, a very different party then.
ROZSA: The party of Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes sounds more like what you're describing than the party of Trump.
WHITMAN: Yes. Well, they are much more like it. And then I grew up in the party of — go way back — Dwight David Eisenhower. That's the kind of party that I want to see, that I saw back in the days when I was growing up. It was defining the party to me. I will always believe in that because, you know, we had assistance to low-income communities, an extension of Social Security. We believed in those things. We provided asylum for refugees. We had minimum wage. I mean, we cared for all people. There wasn't this discrimination of "you've got to be white and South African if you want to get into this country." So, the place for the federal government — we had the federal road system — but we had other beliefs that went beyond what we're seeing today.
Why Whitman and I like Ike.
ROZSA: I am thrilled that you said that Eisenhower is a Republican who influenced you. In 1959, he wrote a letter to a dying World War II veteran in which he explained why he admired the philosopher Eric Hoffer. And his quote, which I want to read to you, I suspect will resonate with you.
Eisenhower said about Hoffer, and I'm quoting, "Dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions."
Eisenhower then argued that authoritarianism is appealing precisely because it encourages people to not think for themselves. What are your thoughts on that analysis?
WHITMAN: It's absolutely on target. And it's what we're seeing today. It's just much easier. It's a complicated world, and so it's really easy if someone tells you, "This is what you're going to believe, this is what's right. Don't worry about anything else." I mean, Trump said, when he first went in the first time, "Don't believe what you see, believe what I tell you." That's just, to me, so counterintuitive, but the playbook he's using today is exactly the one you see used by all dictators: Undermine the public's trust in the forms of government, in the press, in authority of any sort except for the authority that I support.
ROZSA: I think that's an excellent point. I want to read to you one more section from that letter because it, I think, speaks precisely to what you're saying. He said, "It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy."
What are your thoughts on that? Does that also speak to you?
WHITMAN: It's describing the administration, from what I can see — certainly describing Hegseth and Trump's use of the military. I mean, Eisenhower was so wise in so many ways. When he warned about the military-industrial complex, when he saw the need for the balance and the need for people to understand one another — he believed very deeply in people-to-people being what makes the difference. When you get to know somebody, you know that they're not that different from you. They really want the same things. We all want the same things for our families and our futures: to be able to support our families, to not have to worry about having a roof over our head or where the next meal is coming from, and supporting our children, offering them a better life. We seem to have lost some of that high vision, that high moral vision that applied to everybody.
In his mind and the way he operated, he embraced everyone. And that's something we certainly don't see today, to the detriment of our country, quite frankly.
ROZSA: He also — and this is something I'm going to bring up in terms of your record working for President Bush at the EPA — Eisenhower believed in the importance of science. Earlier this year, I reviewed the movie "Pressure," which was about Eisenhower trusting expert meteorologists prior to the D-Day invasion. Have you seen it or heard of it?
CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: I haven't seen it, but I've heard of it, and I'm very familiar with what happened then and the decisions he had to make and the leap of faith, but the fact that he relied on the science and gave it its due to say, "Okay, well, this is a window. There's a potential. It's small." And then he did something that you'd never see anybody do today. He wrote that letter saying, essentially, "If this doesn't work, the blame's on me."
ROZSA: Well, first of all, on a personal level, Governor Whitman, if there is one thing you can take away from this interview with me, see "Pressure"! You will love it. You will absolutely love it. I am recommending it to you.
WHITMAN: I'm writing it down right now.
ROZSA: "Pressure." It stars Brendan Fraser as Dwight Eisenhower. It's a masterpiece.
How Trump destroyed Republicanism.
ROZSA: So my next question is about why you think the Republicans under Trump have rejected science and rejected moderation and have gone so far in the direction of becoming, as you put it, a cult.
WHITMAN: Well, that's Donald Trump. And in fairness, he has been a master at capturing the public mood, because for so long before he came into office, Congress — we'd gotten to the point about which our Founding Fathers warned us: What happens when you only have two parties? That then they stop worrying about the good of the public and start focusing on how to keep their own power, how to keep themselves in office. And that's where we find ourselves. So they hadn't been responding to the needs of the American people. They hadn't been solving the big problems. And people were mad — understandably frustrated and mad. And they wanted someone who said they were going to blow it up. And Donald Trump walked in and said, "I'm going to blow it up." And they believed it. They didn't see him for who he really was and what he'd done.
I mean, I'm always amazed when I hear people say how much they love him, how much he cares for people. He doesn't. He doesn't care for the little person. He put more small-business people out of business in Atlantic City than anybody. I mean, he never paid his bills fully. He sent his lawyers, and they met with them, all the plumbers and the electricians, at one point and said, "Okay, you're going to get X amount on the dollar, and you can sue us and you'll probably win, but you'll be broke by the time you do." And they didn't have a choice. And that's not the kind of person, that's not the kind of sensibility and caring for the people you represent that I wanted in the White House, that I thought should be in the White House.
ROZSA: So let's talk about the Forward Party, because the Forward Party, as I see it, is a breath of fresh air in that they are boldly centrist. And I know that people think of centrism as just moderation, but in this political climate, where both parties believe radicalism is the way to go, centrism is quite bold. How are you planning on keeping the Forward Party in the public discussion through the rest of this decade and beyond?
WHITMAN: Well, first of all, we are building a party from the ground up. We are concentrating not just on the federal candidates — although we have five senatorial candidates, 20 U.S. House of Representatives candidates this cycle — but we also have five gubernatorial candidates. We have multiple statewide and local officials. We already have 80-some-odd officials serving in office as Forwardists. So we're building a sustainable party. We're not going to go away. What's happened in the past with third parties is, so often, after the election cycle, that's it, they're gone. They were there for one candidate, one cycle, and if they didn't win, then their infrastructure went away, everything went with them. And we lost all the advantage of what had been built up over that time. So we are sticking with it.
When you've got — now it's probably 50 percent, certainly it's 49 percent — of registered voters who are registered independents, they're basically saying, "A pox on both your houses. We don't like either of the parties. We don't think either of them are serving us." And so what we say to them: "Look, if you already said you don't like the Republicans and you don't like the Democrats, now is your chance to speak up and be heard as citizens." Because our members are people who have sworn to uphold the Constitution, respect the rule of law, work with anyone to solve problems, create a safe space to discuss controversial issues, work to ensure that anyone who has a legal right to vote gets to vote, work to base it all on decency, democracy and diversity, to make sure that you are representing the people who put you in office, not a political party that tells you, "These are the issues you have to bring up, this is how you have to talk about them. And if you don't do that, oh, by the way, we are going to cut you off at the knees and stop supporting you. We'll support alternatives. We'll run candidates against you." I don't think people fully appreciate how much control the two major parties exert over the candidates. And that's something that we're fighting back against.
ROZSA: And how the two major parties are very effective at bringing the loudest people into the most prominence. I actually just pulled up a quote from our 2017 interview where you said, "Those who are yelling the loudest have gotten the microphone, and those are the ones that get the attention of the press." It sounds to me like part of the reason it's more difficult for centrists like yourself to be Republicans is because the Republican-oriented press punishes people who are moderate. What are your thoughts on that?
WHITMAN: Well, I mean, that's happened forever. When you're outside the boundaries of what the parties have set up, the parties don't like it.