The Hill News

Republicans' first month in control of the House shows the party is focused on "politics, not policy," one of the GOP's top centrists said Wednesday.

Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R), who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Bush administration, said that her party's focus during its first month had tended more toward placating activists in the party.

"What this tells me is that the emphasis is on 2012 -- on politics, not on policy," she said this morning on MSNBC.

Whitman's been a noted centrist in a Republican Party that's tilted toward the right over the years, having adopted the grassroots Tea Party movement into its ranks. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) himself said Tuesday that he should be considered a member of that movement.

Her line almost echoes what Democrats have accused Republicans of over their first month: of being insufficiently focused on job ! creation. Democratic lawmakers and campaign committees have hammered away at that message, and a series of top Democrats in the House wrote Boehner this week to complain of just that.

The former EPA administrator said she understood why Republicans in the House and Senate had spent most of their first month on efforts to undo healthcare reform, to largely follow through with campaign promises to voters. But she said that the GOP needed to recognize it would be unsuccessful, and needed to move onto fixing it.

"Once that's done, what they should be focused on is how to fix it," she said.