party of one, please

Are you pro-life? anti-torture? sorry - you still have to promise to vote for Giuliani in the general election. This is just one more astonishing reason to loathe the Virginia Republican Party establishment. What's next -perhaps a loyalty oath to your party's state and local career politicians?

In 1994, the party nominated Oliver North. Enough people who typically voted Republican were repulsed by a man they considered someone who lied to Congress, and Sen. John Warner endorsed an independant bid by former Republican Governor Marshall Coleman. In the midst of the Gingrich revolution, a strongly conservative state reelected a liberal Democrat. One might have expected the VA GOP establishment to reform its ways and reach out to moderates and conservative independents as crucial to its future. Democrats now control Virginia's state senate, governorship, and one (probably soon to be two) seats in the U.S. Senate. And the VA GOP keeps on shrinking its base in order to save itself from the "RINOs" in its ranks.