“This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative,” said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. “When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it’s been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked – even if it hasn’t given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism.” …
Representative Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who is the House majority leader, bristled on Sunday when he was asked about how to square the bill with federalist precepts.
“I really think it is interesting that the media is defining what conservatism is,” Mr. DeLay said. “The conservative doctrine here is the Constitution of the United States.”
The Republican Party has long associated itself with limiting the power of the federal government over the states, though this is not the only time that party leaders have veered from that position. Most famously, in 2000, it persuaded the Supreme Court to overturn a Florida court ruling ordering a recount of the vote in the presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush.
But now the Schiavo case is illustrating splinters in the conservative movement that Mr. Bush managed to bridge in his last campaign, and the challenges Mr. Bush and Republicans face in trying to govern over the next two years, even though they control Congress as well as the White House.