One could ransack the honor roll for local heroes of the New Right's past battles against the Republican mainstream and find no warriors more stalwart than Florida's Tommy Thomas and Iowa's Chuck Grassley. Thomas, a tough-talking Chevrolet dealer from Panama City, likes to boast that he is the only politician who has headed his state's Reagan campaign in three elections. "If everyone were as right-wing as I am," he jokes, "the world would be a screwed-up place." Grassley's pedigree is equally pure: he defeated the favorite of Iowa's moderate G.O.P. establishment in a 1980 primary on his way to becoming a...
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