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

DATE: FRIDAY, August 19, 1994                   TAG: 9408230016
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VIRGINIA'S TWO-PARTY PARTY

SOME REPUBLICANS were not amused by our noticing in a 1991 editorial that the Virginia GOP is really two parties - one represented by legislators with experience and interest in winning elections, and the other by a headquarters hierarchy more interested in enforcing ideological correctness.

How dared we question Republicans' unity of purpose? And with the GOP's steady gains in the state legislature and statewide victories in 1993, what did we know?

But darned if, from here, it doesn't look like the same old, same old.

This week, U.S. Sen. John Warner - elected and twiced re-elected as a Republican - wrote to 15,000 other Virginia Republicans saying he definitely plans to to seek re-election in 1996 as a Republican.

``I'm not going to make Warner important enough to respond [to Warner's letter]," GOP Chairman Pat McSweeney responded. "He's not a Republican.''

He isn't?

Granted, Warner is actively backing the independent candidacy of former GOP gubernatorial nominee Marshall Coleman against the party's official - by convention, not election - U.S. Senate nominee, Oliver North. For that, the senator couldn't really expect a ``come home, Big Jawn, all's forgiven'' telegram from McSweeney.

On the other hand, who's McSweeney to label Warner an impostor?

Before George Allen's gubernatorial victory last year, Warner had been the party's one and only statewide winner during its 12-year drought. The GOP was only too glad to claim him then. And following Allen's victory, it might be recalled, the unelected McSweeney fought off the newly elected governor's attempt to oust him as party chairman.

Warner has irked many Republicans by labeling North unfit to serve in the Senate by virtue of North's role in the Iran-Contra affair, a role that led to criminal convictions later overturned on a technicality. In the letter this week, Warner again defended his rejection of the GOP's Senate nominee: ``I simply can't ask you ... to put your trust and confidence in Oliver North,'' he wrote. Moreover, Warner said, ``I believe I have a right, indeed an obligation, to exercise leadership in my party.''

As chairman of the state party, McSweeney of course has an obligation to exercise party leadership, too, and it is certainly not outlandish to define such leadership to include encouraging party unity behind its nominees. But going so far as to disown the state's leading Republican vote-getter, because he won't march in lockstep behind North's bizarre (albeit big-spending) campaign, hardly seems a party-building activity.

Judging by the opinion polls, the public has not found objectionable Warner's rejection of North: According to those polls, he remains the state's most popular politician. That's Virginia Republican Party No. 1.

``I'd rather have 20 principled Republicans," said McSweeney in 1991, "than 140 legislators who say they are Republicans.'' That's Virginia Republican Party No. 2.

Trouble is, sometimes the principled position is also the popular position.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB