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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 24, 1993                   TAG: 9306240485
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VIRGINIA'S GOP DOESN'T NEED `SAVING'

Naturally, he's conservative enough for Rozell and the Roanoke Times & World-News, liberal Democrats of academia and the media, because he's not a conservative at all - he's a libertarian! In fact, if Goldwater had expounded his ultraliberal positions on social issues in 1964 - homosexuals in the military, absolutely unrestricted abortion - he couldn't have gotten the Democratic nomination for president, much less the Republican nomination.

Why the consuming obsession on the part of liberal Democrats to "save" the Republican party from conservatives? This is like Hitler advising Poland on defense strategy just before the German invasion of Poland.

Democrats ought to worry about saving their own party from Bill Clinton. As for Farris supporters being "ideologues with narrow-based agendas," Mr. Rozell's true gripe is with the broadness of our agenda - the exact opposite of his own liberal agenda. Liberals, of course, would be more comfortable if we narrowed our agenda to match the Goldwater-Kilberg philosophy: loud on economics, silent on moral principle - in short, if we swapped God for Mammon.

Farris supporters did boo speakers at the convention, twice: when Kilberg said she was "mainstream" and we weren't; and when a Kilberg supporter told women delegates they ought to vote for Kilberg because she is a woman. In the face of a genuine, conservative, grass-roots political movement within our state party, Bobbie Kilberg could only pout and insult our intelligence as her libertarian message fell flat. JILL BARRETT DUBLIN