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(snip)
A new level of tension is emerging between President Bush and the congressional Republicans he expects to deliver his election-year agenda. Among the sore points, Mr. Bush's initiative to give legal status to immigrant workers who are here illegally, a bid to attract Latino voters, instead has roiled the party's conservative faithful. Republicans have been put on the defensive over the President's policies on Iraq. And record deficits and spending suddenly have Republicans questioning his fiscal stewardship.
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No one goes so far as to say the tension yet threatens Mr. Bush's re-election or his party's House and Senate majorities. But Republicans would like to pad their narrow margins, if they and Mr. Bush hope to achieve much in a second term. Party leaders insist they can still avoid lackluster turnout by conservative voters, which Bush advisers blame for their near-defeat in 2000.
(snip)
Activists in the think tanks and hard-line conservatives in Congress, though, insist the unrest is bottom-up, with grassroots Republicans erupting over pork-fattened appropriations bills, spending rates exceeding those of the Lyndon Johnson era and a new, budget-busting Medicare drug benefit. The conservative groups and lawmakers now "are trying to stay ahead of their grassroots base," says former House Republican Leader Dick Armey, who heads one such group, Citizens for a Sound Economy.
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In response to conservatives' anger, Mr. Bush now has struck a theme of fiscal conservatism. His administration's first targets are the highway bill and his energy package, which grew from an initial $8 billion in production incentives to $31 billion before conservatives balked. "The White House was all for the energy bill when we passed it, and now they're slowly walking away from it," says John Feehery, a spokesman to House Speaker Dennis Hastert and a top House leadership aide.
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