Republican officials, groping for a formula for party revival, have been firing up their conservative activist base with support for "tea parties" that skewer big government and rhetoric that brands President Barack Obama's Democratic Party as "Socialist."

At the same time, though, GOP strategists have been working to recruit candidates for key 2010 elections who project at least somewhat moderate images that might draw them support across party lines -- making them, at least in theory, more "electable."

This is proving to be no easy balancing act -- as underscored by a rising conservative backlash to the GOP establishment's efforts to clear the Florida Senate primary field for Republican Gov. Charlie Crist.

You learn something new every day.

I wasn't previously aware that Dartmouth College in New Hampshire has a Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, named for the late, left-leaning New York Republican who served a long tenure as governor and later was vice president under Gerald R. Ford.

My first reaction was that it might be a center for intensive research into the liberal Northeastern wing of the Republican Party -- and other extinct civilizations.

Rather, it is a public policy center that, according to its Web site, "fosters a commitment to the ideals of public service and informed public debate" exemplified by Rockefeller. One of the center's units does public opinion research, which produced a poll -- as reported Wednesday by CQ Politics' Poll Tracker -- that indicates the 2010 Senate race in New Hampshire could be very close. Check it out.

Michael Steele must go as Republican National Committee chairman, writes Republican political consultant John Feehery on his blog.

The fact that this comes from a longtime GOP insider -- he was a top aide to Illinois Rep. J. Dennis Hastert during his tenure as House Speaker -- is interesting. Even more interesting is that Feehery says he originally thought picking Steele to head the RNC was a good idea.

"While I didn't actively support Steele's election...," Feehery wrote, "I quietly hoped he would win." He added, "I thought he had a winning personality, and he talked a good game about outreach" as he became the RNC's first African-American chairman.

Republican Senate campaign strategists hope to clear the 2010 Florida primary field for star recruit Charlie Crist, the popular Republican governor, who today announced his bid to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.

But not everyone in Florida's sizable and politically potent Cuban-American community will be lighting a cigar and raising a Cuba Libre (that's rum and coke) to Crist's fortunes -- at least not yet.

That's because one of their own -- Marco Rubio, a former state House Speaker -- beat Crist to the punch by announcing his own Senate candidacy last week.

Sure, the GOP brass has consolation prizes in hand to try to persuade Rubio to stay out of Crist's way in 2010: A run instead for the now-open governor's seat or some other major statewide office.

After more than 230 years of nationhood, you would think that our politics would have run out of new wrinkles. But listening to Republicans and other critics outraged over Arlen Specter's jump to the Democratic Party, you might conclude that the Pennsylvania senator just invented the idea of party-switching in the service of self-advancement.

Of course, that's not true. Not by a long shot.

One of the most unintentionally funny reactions to Specter's political bombshell came in a fundraising e-mail sent out last week by the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm. The pitch was aimed at raising money to elect more House Republicans to counteract a Democratic-dominated Senate (a missive that also underscored the fact that there is hardly any event, whether good or bad for a party, that cannot be parlayed into a fundraising opportunity).