We've got two great political pieces up today.
From our December issue, Tom asks what happened to the moderate Republicans:
Jim Ramstad's career provides a useful prism through which to view the Republicans' disappearing moderate wing. Indeed, obscured by the incessant chronicles of the all-powerful evangelical movement or the arresting tactics of conservative kingmakers like Grover Norquist, is a largely unnoticed tale of centrist Republicans and other dispossessed elements within the GOP coalition waging an intraparty struggle to restore some balance to the party. Though the 2006 midterm disaster was a major event in this story, the Terri Schiavo controversy will be remembered as the transformative moment, if for no other reason than it led to former Missouri Republican senator John Danforth's emergence as an unlikely but crucial figure.
On March 30, 2005, Danforth complained in a New York Times op-ed that "Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians," adding that the "problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement."
And Adam Doster reports on efforts to enfranchise student voters.
--The Editors
