ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SO IT has come to this: Oliver North, arbiter of ethics and integrity.
At the Republicans' state convention in Salem this past weekend, before a crowd of roaring activists raring to wreak vengeance on their party's senior elected official, North examined the conscience of U.S. Sen. John Warner and found it wanting.
North, who continues to evince pride in his scofflaw behavior and consummate dishonesty during the Iran-Contra affair, had a word for Warner's decision to oppose North's 1994 Senate candidacy. It was, he told the convention, "unconscionable."
Well, now. Leaving aside the wisdom of granting center stage to the moral pronouncements of a fired government aide called untrustworthy, deceitful and a loose cannon by his former Reagan administration colleagues, a problem of definition arises: Many Virginians would regard Warner's putting principle before party as an example of heeding rather than violating conscience.
Heeding, in any case, their party's call to purge the recreant, three-fourths of the delegates in a straw vote backed former Reagan budget director Jim Miller, Warner's opponent in the June 11 primary.
And so, epitomized by Warner's absence - and by the photograph of a triumphant Miller locking upheld hands with North and former lieutenant-governor candidate Mike Farris - the convention proved, in the words of one party official, "cathartic."
The issue of this catharsis is now spreading across Virginia in the form of GOP organizers bent on ending Warner's career. What are the implications?
For one, Warner is making a mistake to imagine that - if he stays above the fray and spends lots of money - his moderate image and general popularity with Virginians will overwhelm the zealots' focused fury.
The senator saved himself from certain defeat by choosing a primary over a convention nominating process, a prerogative absurdly given incumbents under state law. But, because the party establishment rarely finds primaries convenient, Virginia's electorate is unaccustomed to them. On top of which, voter indifference these days is rampant.
Warner says he wasn't invited to the convention, but he could have shown up had he wanted to. Doubtless he would have suffered indignities. But attention to the spectacle might have made more Virginians aware of what Warner himself has seemed only dimly to understand: that the revolt against him may well prove successful.
If it does, here's another implication: Whatever trembling voice of moderation still remains in Virginia's GOP would be reduced to a whisper. Miller would owe his nomination to pro-gun and anti-abortion activists, Christian conservatives, Oliver North's legions, and Republican workers - all loud and angry and less intent on winning a general election than on punishing deviations from a rigid-right agenda.
As it happens, Warner is an influential advocate of the military and, by any fair reading, a conservative in his voting record. (He boasts a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition, for instance.) Yet this counts as nothing to some people when his betrayal of North, and before that Farris, is added to the scales.
Miller this week was warning Bob Dole not to come to Virginia to speak on Warner's behalf. Their party's presumptive presidential nominee risks loss of Virginia's electoral votes next November, Miller hinted darkly.
Party officials and Miller supporters also are warning Democrats and independents not to stray into voting booths on Tuesday. Republicans' insistence on exclusion isn't about politics, they explain. It's a matter of ethics.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB