WASHINGTON – President Bush has joined a growing list of top Republicans predicting that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will defeat Barack Obama and other Democrats to win her party’s nominee for next year’s election.
“She’s got a national presence, and this is becoming a national primary,” Bush told Bill Sammon for Sammon’s book “Evangelical President,” out today.
“And, therefore, the person with the national presence, who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites, has got a good chance to be nominated,” Bush said in excerpts obtained by the Drudge Report.
Bush also predicted that whoever the GOP is “can beat her, but it’s going to be a tough race.”
“I will work to see to it that a Republican wins, and, therefore, don’t accept the premise that a Democrat will win,” the president said. “I truly think the Republicans will hold the White House.”
Bush’s comments surfaced as Clinton (D-N.Y.) refused during an interview to promise to bring all U.S. troops home from Iraq by the end of her first term as president.
“You know, I’m not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges because I don’t know what I’m going to inherit,” she said on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
She sounded almost like President Bush or one of his generals cautioning against withdrawing troops too swiftly.
“I don’t know . . . what will be the situation in the region,” she said.