DATE: Tuesday, May 20, 1997                 TAG: 9705200008

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: BY SEAN GERETY 

                                            LENGTH:   54 lines

ANOTHER VIEW: CONSERVATIVES MAY SOON DEPART GOP

Conservative dissatisfaction is growing as the Republican leadership concerns itself more with ``electability'' and retaining power than with principle. Today, the so-called GOP ``big tent'' is looking more like a pup tent. And the day is fast approaching when conservatives finally pull up stakes and leave the ``party regulars'' looking for ways to resod their putting greens.

Syndicated talk-show host and son of ``The Gipper,'' Michael Reagan, was the first public figure to leave the party out of disgust over Republican leaders who are ``more interested in making friends . . . than in fulfilling the mandate they were given by the voters.'' Republican leaders have been so busy trying to ``govern'' that they've forgotten that the first principle of Republicanism is that a free people are best left to govern themselves. Conservatives across the nation sympathize with Reagan when he announces, ``When the Republicans come back to grass-roots America, I'll come back to the Republican Party.''

Many conservatives are finally beginning to realize that their anger should no longer be directed at Bill Clinton and the Democrats but should be placed squarely at the feet of Newt Gingrich. During the past two years, conservatives watched as the Contract With America withered, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Education remained fat and funded and the promised tax cut is now about as likely as UFOs flying behind the Hale-Bopp comet. The fact is, Gingrich's obsession with trying to ``make friends'' with Democrats, big labor and the media have left the Republican majority flaccid and without direction.

But the problem with the Republican leadership is not limited to Washington, D.C. Right here in Virginia, a similar affliction has hit the state GOP leadership. Across the commonwealth, the mantra touted by state Republican leadership has become ``who cares about principles, we just want to win.''

Now, I want to win just as much as the next guy, but at what price? Recently, party Chairman Randy Forbes tried to foist former Portsmouth Mayor Gloria Webb, an avowed Democrat, on Republicans in the 79th District. Why? Because ``she's electable.'' This in spite of the fact that they already had a respected conservative candidate who was bluntly told that if he insisted on running, he would get ``no help from Richmond.''

All this, of course, is lost on Republican leadership who seems to think that leading means acting like a Democrat and being a conservative is something you do only during primaries. It's time for Republicans to either declare war on big government, big labor and the Democrats or for conservatives to pack it in and find a new place to pitch their tent. MEMO: Sean Gerety, who describes himself as a conservative activist,

writer and unabashed admirer of Sen. Jesse Helms, lives in Virginia

Beach.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu