Conservatives' competing agendas threaten their hold on power

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Jun. 30, 2005

Conservatives' competing agendas threaten their hold on power
By Steven Thomma

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - They're spending money faster than any U.S. government in memory. They expanded the federal reach into education and hired more bureaucrats. They've expanded a big-government entitlement program more than anyone since LBJ in the mid-'60s.

Liberals run amok? Hardly. It's the "conservatives" who control the government. And that has some traditional conservatives worried, at the very moment when they enjoy a peak of power that movement founder Barry Goldwater could only dream about.

Conservatives now are under the twin burdens of governing and holding onto power. The pressure on them has deepened fissures within the conservative movement, pitting fiscal hawks against "big government" Republicans and social conservatives against business groups.
(snip)

"This is a clearly important moment of decision," said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House Speaker. "Inevitably in the second term of a president there are tremendous cross-pressures about where the party and the movement go."
(snip/...)

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12026663.htm