I was leafing through my old clippings the other day when I came across the last political column I wrote for the Twin Cities Reader, a now-defunct weekly newspaper in Minnesota. The column, titled "The Graying of GOP Progressives," was about the fading into history of a generation of liberal Republican leaders, and the hope among party moderates that their cause would some day rebound. So far, that hope has proven to be nave. But it is a fact that the Republican Party gave birth to progressivism, and the upper Midwest was its breeding ground. There was "Fightin' Bob" La Follette, the Wisconsin congressman, senator, and governor who founded the National Progressive Republican League in 1911. In 1912 he challenged another Republican progressive, Teddy Roosevelt, for president. More recently, former Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, comes to mind. The star of my column was Minnesotan Harold Stassen, who became famous as a quixotic, nine-time presidential candidate. He was taken seriously the first few runs, but eventually he and his bad hairpiece became the butt of jokes, eliciting only sympathy votes from Republican National Convention delegates. But Stassen had an astonishing career that belied this later reputation. He was elected governor of Minnesota in 1938 at the age of 31, still the record, as far as I know, for the youngest state governor in U.S. history. (Bill Clinton was 32 when he became governor of Arkansas in 1978.) In 1943 Stassen did something that today would be unthinkable: He resigned his office and joined the Navy to fight in World War II, serving as chief of staff to Admiral Halsey. Imagine today's young neo-con hawks giving up political privilege to fight in Iraq. Stassen had gumption. He needed it when he first set out, at the age of 23, to wrest control of the Grand Old Party in Minnesota from discredited arch conservatives. Those were different times. Stassen's Republicanism was rooted in what he called "enlightened capitalism," and his convictions incorporated a sense of social justice. He bolstered the rights of unions to bargain collectively, displayed fiscal responsibility by eliminating government patronage jobs, and later, in 1963, marched on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Until his death in 2001, he was the last surviving signer of the U.N. Charter. In our interview Stassen called himself "basically liberal," and said that he opposed "factions like these right-wing religious groups." In his day, it was unthinkable to use the instruments of government to impose one's religious beliefs on others. Another former Republican governor of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen, told me he, too, was "disheartened" by the ultra-conservative trend in the Republican Party. "Eventually people will see that they're being misled," he said. Other contemporary Republican office holders I interviewed agreed. But that was seven years ago, and the party in both Utah and Minnesota has since only gotten more conservative. After re-reading that column I performed an experiment. I Googled the phrase "moderate Utah Republican." I got zero hits. Many hoped that a popular moderate like Gov. Olene Walker might succeed in loosening the radical right's iron grip on power here. But she got her head handed to her at the Republican state convention, thanks to a process that gives undue power to a handful of activists. She declined to break ranks and run as an independent, an act many voters would have supported. The folks who control today's Utah Republican Party remind me of the Democrats nationally during the '70s and '80s: cocky, vindictive, and too willing to overlook corruption in their ranks - basically, too big for their britches. In 1994 the Democrats got a spanking for their trouble, and Republicans will get their comeuppance someday, too. Recent polls show improvement for Democrats in Utah, and that's good for democracy. Parties in power rarely change without either a reformer like Stassen coming along, or a dose of humility delivered by voters.

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John Yewell is a freelance writer in Salt Lake City and a regular contributor to these pages.