THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 13, 1996 TAG: 9602130005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
The single most potent force mucking up Virginia's orderly transition to a Republican state has been - Republicans.
The latest evidence comes from the party's recent midwinter conclave in Richmond, known as the Republican Advance. There, State Chairman Patrick McSweeney predicted that chances are ``as close to 100 percent as you can get'' that GOP activists will file a lawsuit to prevent Democrats and independents from voting in the party's U.S. Senate primary this spring. If the complainants prevail, voters would have to sign a loyalty oath, pledging their support to the GOP.
Along with nominating Oliver North for the U.S. Senate in 1994 and embracing Gov. George Allen's plans last year to cut services in a low-tax state, this is another bad idea. Or at least an idea unlikely to propel the party into the majority status it has been approaching perpetually for the past two decades.
The target of the litigation foreseen by McSweeney would be Sen. John Warner, of course. Warner put principle - or was it pragmatism? - above party in opposing North's candidacy and that of home-schooling activist Michael Farris for lieutenant governor in 1993. The party's true-blue right-wingers are still smarting over the transgressions, even though election results say Warner's views matched those of most Virginians.
To some party extremists, it is of no moment that Warner's often-centrist stands put him at the top of the state's political-popularity charts. Stymied in their hopes of opposing the senator's renomination in a convention, his enemies would at least like to make sure that no impure elements infiltrate the primary.
It is understandable that those who toil in the GOP trenches in election after election would like the loudest say in picking the party's candidates. But long range, the GOP is done no good when independent voters are locked out of participating or when a candidate without broad appeal becomes the nominee.
The goal for the GOP should be a real Republican advance, not another retreat from the mainstream in pursuit of a lost cause. by CNB