> Robert Lekachman,
> knew Gilder in the 60's. Said he started out as a "moderate"
> Republican in the Ripon Society. Riponites still around?
>
> Michael Pugliese
Yup. <http://www.riponsoc.org/>
There are a lot of Ripon Society types around at the state government level in the upper midwest. Here, an older style of what one might call Wilkie-Eisenhower republicanism persists. As the national GOP has become a Dixiecrat party, these people have become more and more isolated within their own party, but they keep plugging away. In places like Wisconsin and Minnesota, it's difficult for a hard right candidate to get elected to any significant office--both the style and the message rub people the wrong way--and this encourages a certain "moderation." The same is true in much of the northeast. Steve Gunderson, who represented the Wis. 3rd district in Congress for 8 terms, was a classic Ripon Society type. Gunderson, a gay man, was outed on the House floor by sunbelt repug Robert Dornan, but his rural district re-elected him just the same. When he quit politics in 1996, he left muttering that the GOP had become too extreme and the House too polarized. That seat is now held by a Democrat, Ron Kind. Iowa's Jim Leach is another example of this republican sub-species. He was chairman of the Ripon Society through most of the 80s.
Jacob Conrad