Free Republic

Washington, D.C. - President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president. In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ” Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to...

**DRUDGE EXCLUSIVE** President Bush, for the first time, is predicting that Barack Obama will be defeated in the Democratic presidential primaries by Hillary Rodham Clinton. “She's got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary,” Bush tells author Bill Sammon in the bombshell book, EVANGELICAL PRESIDENT, set for release Monday. “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.” Breaking his vow not to play “pundit-in-chief” in the 2008 presidential race, Bush tells...