"We're going to alienate people no matter what we do," Anderson says. "If we don't alienate anyone, we're doing nothing. That's what happened last year."

Anderson and his supporters say that the HRC's policies are in line with the GOP national platform, "even if people on this campus think we're ultra-conservative or neo-Nazi."

"This is the first time the [HRC] executive board has taken a stand to defend that platform," says Zumpano, the club's secretary. "Whether or not Republicans are in the majority or the minority, whether they're popular or unpopular, is besides the point. Harvard is in no way representative of mainstream U.S. politics."

Like Chae and Scott, Rutledge says he finds the HRC's social policies offensive and counterproductive, and claims that campus Republicans are wary to embrace the party "for fear of guilt by association." But Rutledge says his primary motivation for leaving the organization was his personal differences with Anderson, whose political ambitions he thought were "out of control."

"I felt like Sumner was running for office and I was working on his political campaign," Rutledge says. "He's using the club for his personal agenda--it's taken on his form."

Rutledge points to the connections Anderson made with speakers like Republican political candidates Dan Daley and William F. Weld '66, and the job offer from the Heritage Foundation he received on the HRC trip to Washington, D.C., as evidence that Anderson is running the club for his own personal benefit.

Anderson denies the charges, and claims that Rutledge quit because he had "done zero" for the club and resented Anderson's "hard-ass" style of pestering executives.

"I'm not the president completely for charity work," Anderson says. "Whenever you put time into something and do a good job, you expect to be able to use that."

Anderson says he hopes to parlay his ROTC connections and the swimming skills that almost brought him to the NCAA championships this winter into a position as a Navy Seal after graduation. Next in his plans is law school, followed by a career in politics, which Anderson says he hopes to take "as far as I can go."

"Someone's going to be governing the country. Someone's going to be shaping where this country goes," Anderson says. "I'm kind of worried what might happen if it's left up to other people."

Now that most of the moderate members of the HRC have withdrawn, Ackley and Anderson agree that the club will continue to move to the right in the future. Without internal dissension, the HRC may prove to be an even greater thorn in the side of Harvard's liberal majority next year.

"I like controversy, but not within my own board," Anderson says. "This semester, we've had a cleaning-out process. Now, the board is set. The controversy is over. Now, the people who resigned have no say at all."