Nelson Rockefeller and his tribe of followers were the Northeast fiscal conservatives who realized that the government needed to be fair to industry and successful Americans as well as the poor and needy. They believed in free markets and still saw America as a land of opportunity where the poorest citizen could rise to the peaks of wealth and power by sheer dint of hard work and ambition, just as the Rockefeller family had done during the earliest days of the Union. And isn’t that exactly what so many of you hard-core conservatives are crying out for today?

Colin Powell could do much worse than to be lumped in with the likes of Nelson Rockefeller. And the Republican Party could do far worse than to have diverse voices like that making up the choir. He surely will fail any number of litmus tests which some of you would set before him, but by now he has most assuredly earned the right to a place at the table and a voice in the party.