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

DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994                   TAG: 9406080009
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STATE GOP

NOW IS the time for all good Republicans to come to the aid of their party - by insisting that it come to its senses.

As 14,600 delegates pack their bags and head for this weekend's state GOP convention in Richmond, they face the task of rescuing their party from, among other things, talk-show infamy and, possibly, disgrace and even dissolution.

The mere prospect of Oliver North's nomination for the U.S. Senate has been embarrassment enough. Editorial cartoons depicting North raising his right hand and saying, "Virginia is for liars." Jay Leno cracking wise on NBC's "Tonight Show" that North is a perfect Senate candidate because "he comes pre-indicted."

North can - as North does - that they their esteemed (and, he says, "steamed" about North) high priest of conservatives, former President Ronald Reagan?

And are they looking forward to a splitting headache? With North, that may be what they'll get.

U.S. Sen. John Warner, the best vote-getter in the party, has served notice that, if North is nominated, he'll actively support an independent Senate bid by fellow Republican Marshall Coleman. Warner sees North - a convicted felon, though his convictions were overturned on a technicality - as unfit to hold public office. Warner also may bolt the GOP altogether, he says, and seek re-election in 1996 as an independent. Other stalwarts of the party, moderates and moderate conservatives of the ilk of former Gov. Linwood Holton and former 6th District Congressman Caldwell Butler, may also abandon it. It would be an honorable course of action, provided they sign no party-loyalty oaths beforehand.

Or, convention delegates could nominate a respectable, unindicted conservative: Jim Miller, an economist and budget director in the latter years of the Reagan administration. The party rules - all delegates are officially uncommitted, voting Saturday for the nomination will be by secret ballot - work against having a truly representative and accountable assemblage. Such a convention might not nominate an Oliver North. But perhaps the rules also will provide enough leeway for the convention delegates to avert a North victory.

By coming to the aid of their GOP, they would be coming to the aid of Virginia. The survival of a responsible Republican Party would be a boon to the commonwealth.

So would be a revival of the old-fashioned notion that perfidy to the Constitution and demonstrated lack of integrity should be a barrier, not a boost, to elected office.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB