Republican “Press Tart” Reveals Tawdry Encounters In New Book

Lisa Baron was a press advisor to Republicans Ralph Reed, Darrell Issa and Christine Whitman. She likens her self to rock groupies like Pamela Des Barres as she tells of encounters like the one she had with Bush43 press secretary Ari Fleischer in her book Life of the Party.

“Life of the Party,” to be published by Citadel Press in July, panders to lurid curiosity. It is filled with material sure to interest columnists who trade in the gossip of this town’s bold-faced names, as well all those politically ambitious (and anonymous) underlings who roam the halls of government. Think Chelsea Handler, but aimed at 20somethings with “staff assistant” in their title.

Baron only makes it to page five before she’s describing a sexual encounter with Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary for George W. Bush, in a Greenville, S.C., hotel room.

She was 26 years old and working for Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed while he campaigned for Bush in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.

And why did Baron do what she did?

“To be able to say, ‘I’m with the such-and-such campaign,’ or I work for ‘Senator So-and-So’ is to us political junkies what ‘I’m with the band’ is to Pamela Des Barres. My remarkable encounter with Ari in that unremarkable hotel room perfectly summed up my groupie-like relationship to politics at that time — I wanted it, I worshipped it, and I went for it.”

Reed gets mostly favorable treatment in the book; Whitman not so much. If I have an opportunity to interview Ms. Baron on her book tour, I’d like to know, concerning her work for the former executive director of the Christian Coalition: What’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a place like that?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.