A battle for the soul of the Republican Party has spilled over into the contest for national committee chairman, as conservative members are prodding candidates to shift their way.

Now that the presidential campaign is over and the congressional leadership elections are settled, conservative activists are turning to the race for chairman as their next chance to shape the party. 

Already, one candidate has come under fire for his association with a centrist organization, while a group of prominent RNC members is set to put others through an exhaustive test of their personal conservatism.

Bopp, along with nearly half the voting members of the committee, has established the Conservative Steering Committee, which will meet with candidates Jan. 6 and hold a straw poll to determine whether each candidate is conservative enough to serve as chairman. The group is semi-exclusive, with some RNC members invited to join while others have had to ask to be let in.

Several members of the steering committee have expressed concern about Michael Steele, a leading candidate for RNC chairman, and his relationship with the centrist Republican Leadership Committee. That group, founded by former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, was made up largely of abortion-rights Republicans, causing many to attack Steele's anti-abortion credentials.

Steele considers himself in the conservative camp but says he joined the centrist group to build a bridge between the two wings of the party. "Wake up people! What are you going to do? Are you going to kick [centrists] out of the party?" he said during an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network.

"I have watched this party self-disintegrate for the last four or five years. I watched this party isolate itself from itself," Steele said.

Other candidates are having less difficulty identifying themselves as conservatives. Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell ran hard to the right in his 2006 race for governor, beating out a more centrist candidate in the primary. Blackwell has won support from traditional conservative groups, such as the Gun Owners of America, of which Blackwell serves on the board of directors, and the Club for Growth.

Chip Saltsman, who ran Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, is close to many in the evangelical community and has little trouble convincing anyone of his conservative credentials. 

And South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson's distinctive drawl and signature smile give many the impression that he's a traditional Southern conservative.

Those conservatives who want to purge the party of centrists consider any perceived ideological impurity enough to virtually brand one a traitor, and the ranks of such conservatives within the national committee appears to be growing. 

Still, Steele and other candidates warn the party needs to widen its base of voters and not drive potential supporters away, as it has done in the past.

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis is another leading candidate for RNC chairman who wants to reach beyond the party’s traditional roots. He also calls himself a conservative. His state, once the epicenter of the Reagan revolution, is now becoming increasingly blue as the GOP moves away from what it once was.

"We are the home of the Reagan Democrat," Anuzis told The Hill, regarding his home state. Those voters, though, are no longer casting Republican ballots. "We're losing people like me. We're losing suburban voters with four kids who pay extra to send their kids to parochial schools."

Most candidates have resisted staking out ideological turf. Appealing to diverse constituencies from coast to coast would seem to largely preclude a narrow ideological focus; a Republican from Washington state has very different priorities from one in Alabama.

But the 168 voting members of the RNC are the most dedicated and partisan of activists — a group with which President Bush still has a near-universal satisfaction rating — and ideology is bound to remain an issue with the committee.

The race is getting a little nastier beneath the polite compliments exchanged in public. Some candidates and their aides have begun disseminating opposition research about their rivals, questioning their ability to do the job or their commitment to the cause.

Others are trying to avoid the rift a contentious and protracted battle could bring. California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring, publicly neutral in the RNC chairman's race, says each of the candidates is sufficiently conservative for most members of the committee. "I don't see ideology being a driving factor in this contest at all," said Nehring, a member of Bopp's steering committee.

Committee members so far have largely kept their arguments under the radar, alluding to candidates' publicly stated views only in passing. But as the race for chairman heats up, there looms the prospect of all-out war between conservatives and those who see a need for reaching out to centrist voters.