ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 13, 1996 TAG: 9606130024
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
U.S. SEN. John Warner didn't just win renomination Tuesday. He won big. And in turning back Jim Miller's GOP primary challenge from the right by a nearly 2-1 margin, Warner gave traditional Virginia Republicans and mainstream conservatives cause for both celebration and concern.
At least for now, though, more of the former. They can celebrate the fact that the odds of Democrats recapturing the Senate in November, long in any event, just got longer. Warner is in a considerably stronger position to defeat Democratic nominee Mark Warner (no relation) than Miller would have been.
Mainstream Republicans can celebrate, too, the clarity of the message sent by the primary outcome. Perhaps this time, the message - that the faction in control of the state GOP apparatus, the religious right and its allies, is operating in a world at some distance from real-life politics - finally will get through to those in need of hearing it.
On Tuesday, the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association, Oliver North and other apostles of resentment were repudiated at the polls.
Granted, winning an election isn't everything. Tenacious commitment to principle deserves respect; it can survive defeats of the moment to emerge triumphant in the long haul. Like abolitionists of the 19th century and civil-rights workers of the 20th, for example, many anti-abortion activists appear committed to long-term goals.
And yet, at the heart of the Republican hard right's bill of indictment against John Warner lay not abiding principle but a political complaint: his opposition to North's U.S. Senate candidacy in 1994.
What to the anti-Warner faction among GOP insiders amounted to disqualifying disloyalty, it turns out, was to many rank-and-file Republican voters a point in the senator's favor. The primary results make this plain.
To many, the real betrayal of Republicanism and conservatism was North's convention nomination, not Warner's hostility to it. In North, the party put forth a candidate about whom even more character questions could be raised than about Democratic incumbent Charles Robb. North may have been the only prospective candidate in Virginia who could have lost to so tarnished a Democrat in so Republican a year.
But, if the message of North's defeat in '94 - and, the year before, of homeschooling advocate Michael Farris' loss for lieutenant governor even as George Allen was ending 12 years of Democratic rule in Richmond - didn't get through, can the message of Warner's victory?
That's the concern. Diehard anti-Warner activists can point to the fact that, under state law, any registered Virginia voter could cast a ballot in the Republican primary. Indeed, the senator openly appealed for Democratic votes.
As it happens, any notion that crossover Democrats significantly skewed the results is suspect. Turnout wasn't much higher statewide than in the 1989 GOP gubernatorial primary, and was downright skimpy in some heavily Democratic places like Southwest Virginia's coal counties. The sheer size of Warner's victory margin argues against crediting or blaming Democrats for it.
Even so, among Republican activists who abhor Warner's ability to attract votes from moderates and independents, it's not clear how many minds his decisive victory will change.
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