
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 19, 1994                   TAG: 9403220029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

REAGAN JOINS THE NORTH-BASHERS

"THOU SHALT not speak ill of a fellow Republican," goes the GOP's informal but longstanding 11th Commandment. The dictum has often been more honored in the breach than the observance - the GOP is, after all, a political party - but Ronald Reagan is one notable Republican who has generally stayed clear of entangling intraparty alliances.

Until now. And for good reason.

Today, Virginia Republicans will hold the final wave of local mass meetings in their Byzantine process for electing delegates to the state convention - delegates who will nominate the party's candidate for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Charles Robb.

This week, Reagan spoke plenty of ill about the disgraced Oliver North, the former national-security bureaucrat who's battling - and may be leading - economist James Miller for that nomination.

In a letter to former U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt of Nevada, a close friend and political ally, Reagan accused North of telling untruths about supposed meetings with Reagan that never occurred, and about a Reagan role that never existed in the Iran-Contra scandal and its cover-up.

The letter might have an effect that opposition to North from others - including former Reagan administration officials, and such Virginia GOP leaders as U.S. Sen. John Warner and U.S. Reps. Thomas Bliley and Herb Bateman - hasn't had.

It might have an effect on those North supporters who are staunch conservatives and who have simply not stopped to consider that Miller, every bit as conservative in any respectable meaning of the word as North but without North's felonious baggage, would be a stronger candidate for their viewpoint in the general election.

It might have an effect on those Republican activists - including, sadly, Roanoke Valley lawmakers Brandon Bell and Morgan Griffith, who both ought to know better - who have endorsed North as a payback for what he has contributed to GOP fund-raising rather than for anything he could possibly contribute to Virginia's and America's future.

It might even open the eyes of those North supporters who till now have stayed blind to North's convictions for lying to Congress, destroying evidence sought by criminal investigators, and diverting public funds to personal use. North claims exoneration because the convictions were later overturned. In fact, they were overturned because he had already confessed to the crimes in another, punishment-immunizing venue.

In a Machiavellian sort of way, North's nomination could be a Democrat's best-case scenario. Not only would Miller, Reagan's budget director during the latter years of his presidency, likely be a stronger general-election candidate. If elected, he also would be a far stronger advocate for Republican positions.

Nevertheless, all Virginians - Democrats as well as Republicans, liberals as well as conservatives - have an interest in the derailment of North's candidacy. Political opinions and partisan positions come and go with the tide of events. Core values and standards - honor, integrity, duty - are more durable.

Against such standards North has been weighed and found wanting by the courts, by Congress, by colleagues - and, now, by former President Reagan.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB