Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 3, 1993 TAG: 9301040251
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICH LOWRY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BREAK WITH PRECEDENT
FOR VIRGINIA Republicans, the past four years can be considered a long seminar on how to lose elections, with failed gubernatorial candidate Marshall Coleman and soon-to-be-former President Bush the instructors.Both candidates proved that without a firm commitment to conservative principle, Republicans can be outflanked to their right by Democrats, robbing Republicans of their selling points and making them electoral duds.
The chief contenders for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1993 offer Republicans a choice - repeat these mistakes of the past or learn from them. Congressman George Allen would be a break with recent Republican precedent, while Northern Virginia businessman Earle Williams represents a reprise of Bush-Coleman pragmatism.
Williams made his career, and millions, running the McLean-based defense firm BDM in a business world where ideology isn't an asset. Businessmen succeed by maintaining good relations with politicians of all persuasions, not by sticking to one party or position.
Williams took this business principle to heart, giving tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates nationally and in Virginia. He even helped retire Lt. Gov. Don Beyer's campaign debt. Williams' bipartisan largesse says something important about his political style - pragmatic rather than ideological, deaf to principle when his interests are at stake.
Bush, who preferred compromising with Democrats to fighting them, had a similar bent. So did Coleman, who in response to shifting winds, pragmatically remade his political self so often he ended up just blowing away.
In 1993, the overriding issue in Virginia will likely remain the economy. What doomed Republicans in 1989 was that when Wilder promised low taxes and fiscal responsibility he was just as, if not more, credible than Coleman.
Next year, Mary Sue Terry will pick up the same banner, this time for four years of Wilder's fiscal reasonableness behind her. To counter her, Republicans need a candidate who can mount a convincing defense of the conservative vision of government, promising low taxes and wise spending to foster growth in the commonwealth.
But Williams has weaknesses on this crucial issue. He lobbied in favor of Gov. Baliles' sales-tax increase in the mid-1980s, not an indication of fiscal conservatism.
Williams supporters, borrowing from Ross Perot, say his work at BDM shows he can run an economy. But what voters need to hear, and what government is all about, is ideas, not excerpts from a resume.
Allen has mounted that defense of ideas throughout his career. He promises not to raise taxes as governor, and in his nine years in the General Assembly fought to pare down Democratic budgets. This year, The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste recognized Allen as a "Taxpayer's Hero" and the National Taxpayers Union called him the most fiscally conservative member of Virginia's congressional delegation.
With widespread voter cynicism about politics, Williams' supporters contend their candidate's ultimate asset is that he's not a politician.
But while Williams was getting rich at BDM, Allen was winning races, maintaining constituencies, forging consensus, defending principle under the pressure of day-to-day politics.
The men responsible for the glory years of the Republican Party in Virginia, Godwin, Dalton, were all avowedly politicians - it takes politicians to build a party and win elections.
In 1993, George Allen is the right politician to carry the Republican fight to the Democrats. As for Mr. Williams, Republicans don't need another lesson on how to lose an election.
Rich Lowry, a longtime Virginia resident, is an associate editor at National Review.