LEBANON, N.H. -- Can you discern, deep in the new Republican Party -- amid the conservative warriors and tea-infused crusaders -- a faint moderate heartbeat?
Hardly anyone is asking that question this month, in the wake of the Republican tsunami that swept Democrats out of office and swept a Republican majority into the Senate chamber. But two unrelated events this month make the question worth posing, if only to explore the possibility and to understand the political landscape here in the state that only 15 months from now will hold the first presidential primary.
The first of those events took place in the western of New Hampshire's two congressional districts, where Marilinda Garcia, a Republican House challenger, failed to topple Democratic Rep. Annie McLane Kuster. Garcia, with such new-age GOP credentials as endorsements by the Club for Growth and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, pulled only 45 percent of the vote, which is actually a higher number than any poll reading she recorded this year.
The second indicator is in the state's bookstores, where copies of Richard Norton Smith's "On His Own Terms," a magisterial biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller, are being stocked on the shelves. Rockefeller didn't prevail in two presidential tries in this state, but nonetheless is remembered fondly by Republicans of a certain age.
Smith's biography journeys back to an era when the word "Rockefeller" was an adjective, applied to a specific strain of Republicanism preoccupied with housing, transportation, the environment, newly expanded universities and energy projects. No Republican today would choose the description "Rockefeller Republican," but one sentence in the 880-page biography shows there is life yet in the old creed:
"Next to Lyndon Johnson, no one better than Rockefeller personified the era's confidence in American know-how, the purity of American motives and the capacity of the world's richest nation to eliminate poverty by making opportunity color-blind and education universal."
Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke derisively in the mid-1950s of the "extreme right wing" of the GOP and, as the 1954 midterm elections approached, worried that "if the right wing really recaptures the Republican Party, there simply isn't going to be any Republican influence in this country within a matter of a few brief years."
In his diary, the 34th president wrote: "The Republican Party must be known as a progressive organization or it is sunk."
Hardly anyone agrees today, when the GOP is manifestly a conservative party. The great worry for the conservatives, however, is that deep in the new Republican Party -- amid the conservative warriors and the tea-infused crusaders -- a faint moderate heart still beats.
Shribman is executive editor of the Post-Gazette, dshribman@post-gazette.com.