Newsview: GOP Lawmakers Defect From Bush

President Bush waves as he returns to the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 8, 2007, after spending the weekend at Camp David in Maryland. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) (Ron Edmonds - AP)

The Republican party has seldom been so fragmented, as a rift expands between traditional economic conservatives and increasingly influential social conservatives.

Some of the harshest criticism of the administration's spending practices has come from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who wrote in his new book that his fellow Republicans deserved to lose their congressional majorities in 2006 because of runaway spending.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a one-time Democrat who left the Republican party three months ago, complained that U.S. conservatives preach fiscal discipline but "want to run up enormous deficits." He called it "alchemy at best, or if you like, lunacy."

More defections on domestic policy seem likely, especially if Democrats can follow through as they have pledged to do, by sending Bush appropriations measures as individual bills. That shifts the focus from overall spending levels to specific items _ such as enhanced port security, boosting funds for medical treatment of returning Iraq veterans and a variety of homeland-security measures.

Bush has claimed the veto-threatened appropriations would amount to about $22 billion more in red ink than he can tolerate.

"Congress has completed the fiscal year without completing work on a single appropriations bill," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. She said Bush would continue to prod Congress to "send the bills to him in regular order, on time, and without busting the budget and without raising taxes."

On the SCHIP bill veto, the division in the party is underscored by the fact that among the bill's most ardent supporters are conservative Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Orrin Hatch of Utah and Georgia's Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.

Grassley has called Bush's veto of the children's health care bill "irresponsible" and says he agrees with criticism of runaway spending during the six years when Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress.

Open dissension among Republicans is stronger in the Senate than the House.

Right now, the House has proportionately more conservatives from safe districts. Also, there is a stronger sense of the importance of hanging together against a Democratic onslaught.

As of now, sponsors of the bipartisan SCHIP bill lack the votes needed in the House to override Bush's veto. The House votes on Oct. 18. But that is only the first of what could be a series of veto fights.

As Republicans get worn down by bad-news polls and disgruntled constituents, "there will be more Republican defections. And Congress may even be able to override a veto," said Norman Ornstein, an analyst who studies Congress at the American Enterprise Institute.

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EDITOR'S NOTE _ Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.