A former New Jersey governor and Cabinet member under President George W. Bush says she thinks the nation’s main political parties are losing the support of most Americans because they are straying toward extremism.

“I’m concerned about where political parties are going and what it means to making policies for the future of our country,” Christine Todd Whitman said during a speech Sunday afternoon in Lawrence.

Whitman spoke to nearly 100 people at Kansas University’s Dole Institute of Politics and then signed copies of her new book, “It’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America.”

Whitman was elected to two terms as Republican governor of New Jersey and then was called by Bush to Washington to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. She recently left the position.

The EPA is not an executive department, but Bush has given its administrator Cabinet rank.

Whitman said she wrote her book to draw attention to her concerns about Republican and Democrat politicians and groups she described as “social fundamentalists,” and their effort to move well away from the center to the extremes of their parties. No longer holding a political office allowed her to write more easily about the issue, she said.

“Many of those who share my position are in office now,” Whitman said. “They can’t say anything.”

Whitman maintained that Bush was less conservative than some people thought and was known as a “uniter instead of a divider” when he was governor of Texas. Yet there are people in Congress who won’t support the president’s efforts to revamp Social Security unless he becomes more supportive of a movement toward a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages, she said.

There are some in Congress who think colleagues should vote with them 100 percent of the time, Whitman said.

“That seems to be the approach of so many in the party today,” she said. “That, to me, is counterproductive.”

Whitman noted her Web site, www.mypartytoo.com, which has links to the Web sites of other moderate political groups. She also said the key to change lay with the public.

“A lot of that depends on the American people,” Whitman said. “Very often we don’t realize the power we have.”

Among those in the audience were a few state politicians, including Lawrence resident and Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger.

Also in the audience was Kansas Republican National Committeeman Steve Cloud. Whitman’s arguments are “right on,” he said after the speech. Although Kansas has a large block of social fundamentalists, he also noted that the state elected a liberal Democratic governor in Kathleen Sebelius.

“There are a lot of people in the middle,” Cloud said. “The problem is getting them to vote more often. They vote in general elections, but they don’t vote in Republican primaries or special elections.”