Hart’s Location, N.H. ? Take a tramp in the snowy hills of New Hampshire and you will see that the winter season is here, even if technically the winter solstice is still weeks away. The little wayside inns of Bethlehem, N.H., are blanketed in bright white trim, the early skin of ice is on the streams of Crawford Notch and, just the other day, atop Mount Willard, the breeze was chilly, the air was frosty, the boughs sagging under the weight of their new wintry burdens.

This is rough country, even now, especially in winter. It has long rewarded the strong, the well-prepared, and, above all, the practical. It was the skills of the practical that built the railroads that hug the hills (you can see the route, outlined in white, from the summits of the aptly named White Mountains), and it was the ingenuity of the practical that, using the tools of a primitive machine shop down in the valley, designed the rickety Skimobile that long ago delivered skiers to the top of Mount Cranmore.

Now we are weeks away from the next New Hampshire primary, and a practical people are girding for a choice that, particularly in the Republican Party (the group that likes to think of itself as practical above all), will deliver a verdict on just how practical Americans like their politicians.

That’s one way to look at the struggle here between a practical man who is depending upon his ideology to carry the day (former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts) and an ideological man who is depending on practicality (former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani) to prevail in the GOP struggle.

This requires some explaining. Mr. Romney is a very practical man, the holder of an MBA from Harvard Business School, the management genius who restructured companies, launched businesses and got the Salt Lake City Olympics back on the straight and narrow. But he’s marrying that practical background with ideological purity. Slowly but unmistakably, he’s adjusted his positions, especially on abortion, to bring them in line with the ideological demands of the social conservatives who are so influential in the Republican Party.

Then there’s Mr. Giuliani. He is a man of core beliefs, of strong ideology. But he’s wagering that the Republican electorate is practical enough to look beyond his support of abortion rights and to ignore the fact that he’s been married three times and nominate him anyhow. He’s depending on a practical party indeed.

This showdown in New Hampshire (and in Iowa, which holds its caucuses on Jan. 3, 2008) comes at a time when the public is wrestling with the very idea of practicality and its place in our politics.

This struggle is especially intriguing among Republicans here in New Hampshire. The latest New York Times-CBS News Poll showed that while less than half of New Hampshire Democrats would vote for a candidate who did not share their views on the war in Iraq, two-thirds of New Hampshire Republicans said they would vote for a candidate who did not share their views on social issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage.

That’s a dramatic finding, especially when you consider that the percentage of Republicans who would vote for a candidate whose views on these important issues differ from theirs is far greater here in New Hampshire than it is in Iowa.

All of which is prompting some serious questions among Republicans here: Are candidates who change their positions merely cynical opportunists? Or is a changed position the reflection of an inquiring mind that has come to a different conclusion? Is there a difference between change and growth? Can a Republican voter put aside his strong views on an important issue like abortion in the service of a political party whose rivals are even more objectionable? Is it even possible for a fully grown adult to change his mind on a fundamental issue such as abortion?

The difficulties inherent in the latter question are only underlined by the U.S. Catholic bishops, who this month grappled with the issue of whether voters ought to be guided by a single-issue viewpoint. “As Catholics we are not single-issue voters,” the bishops said. “A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet a candidate’s position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.”

The bishops made it clear that there may be times when a Catholic may vote for a candidate with an “unacceptable” moral position – but not to “advance narrow interests or partisan preferences.”

Republicans have nominated practical men before. Herbert Hoover was an engineer, a profession all but devoid of romance. He was perhaps the most beloved and respected American of the first quarter of the 20th century, a fact often forgotten by Americans who blame him solely, and likely unjustifiably, for the Great Depression. Richard Nixon was a practical man, and it was the triumph of his practicality over his ideology that led him to his greatest triumphs, the openings with Soviet Russia and China. The fact that both men are remembered more for their failures than their successes does not mean that their profiles as practical practitioners of the political arts was not immensely appealing in their times.

So now, with winter coming to Crawford Notch and all of New Hampshire – with the calendar beginning to catch up with the weather – we face the hardest season in this, perhaps the hardest part of the country. With winter come hard questions about ideology and practicality. They are the questions that give life to this year’s political tests, just as they have to all of American politics. Our first answers will come in the cold of the approaching weeks, from a people not afraid of hard choices.