For the past two years, Republican moderates in the House have grumbled as their party took up a right-leaning agenda, with votes to ban gay marriage, to make felons of illegal immigrants, and to prevent a brain-damaged Florida woman from being removed from a feeding tube, among other conservative causes...

On Tuesday, Republicans paid the price, their moderate wing says. Voters gave control of the House to Democrats for the first time since 1994 and provided cliffhanger gains in the Senate. Moderate Republicans wasted no time blaming the party’s right wing...

Steven C. Clemons, a senior fellow at the centrist New America Foundation who identifies himself as a moderate Republican, said Tuesday’s elections may prompt a shift. “A new competition has broken out for the soul of the Republican Party,” he said.

Clemons tied the moderates’ election losses to the House GOP leadership elections in February. After then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas resigned, moderate Rules Chairman David Dreier of California briefly appeared in line to claim the job. But the GOP caucus instead elected John A. Boehner of Ohio, who embraced the causes of conservatives who had supported him.

“Had David Dreier moved into Boehner’s seat, I think the picture would have been different,” Clemons said. “Before the election, you would have seen more work to position Republicans closer to the center than they did...”

“We didn’t have anything to run on,” Resnick said. She said Main Street members planned to hold a conference call Wednesday to discuss the election and how to regroup.

Doing that will be difficult, Clemons believes. “While they’re in a morally superior position, they’re in a politically inferior position,” he said...

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