I think #2 is more important than #1. By far. However, if we can have both #1 and #2, I'm all for it. But if we're going to get only one, I choose #2.
My point is, having only 1 OR 2 is not enough. So it's not a matter of one being more of less important than the other. A Republican minority that is wonderfully conservative and rails against a Democratic Socialist majority wont save our country. Neither will a RINO slow-slide to socialism. Without both, we are nowhere.
We gave them the House. They said we need the Senate. We gave them the Senate. Then they said we needed the White House. We gave them the White House. Ah, but who is "we" and who is "them". "They" are Republicans. We have a Republican majority, not a conservative majority. And "we" are the voters - not just the conservative base, but the moderates and swing voters who make the majority coalition. We, the conservatives, have to be electing one of OURS. For example, we need to get Pat Toomey to defeat Arlen Specter. about 80-90% of the Republicans in Congress are pretty good conservatives. If we get enough margins in the Senate and House, we can simply ignore the RINOs.
Better minority party status than ... to utterly abandon our conservative and constitutional principles. I cant agree that 'minority party status' is a desirable situation when I know the alternative is power to Kennedy, Daschle, Hillery, Liberals like Boxer, Kerry, Pelosi, etc.
And this budget has broken the camel's back. Bush's new budget has a .5% discretionary domestic increase and proposed spending limits. He's turning the ship of state a bit to the right on this issue, about time.
Bush's budget was already in some trouble with top House and Senate budget folks. They didn't like the smell. He was already promising them behind the scenes that they could cut spending next year. But they weren't happy with that, nervous about the base. Still, they were willing to go along with it if there was no opposition.; )
Rove was strategizing, telling them that Bush would take all the heat off them by having proposed the budget and they'd get off scott-free with the voters. But they remember past elections and how conservatives ejected the Dims in '94 and they also recognize that Clinton got more popular and more secure in his position with the Congress in enemy hands.
Being smart politicians, they recognized that Bush may no longer need them at all after he is re-elected. And he'll be lame duck next year anyway so he'll be of less use to the GOP Congress than he has been up to now.
Now, add all that up, and you can see that the fury over this budget gave the House/Senate a good reason to do what they already wanted to do. So they called up Rove and politely told him the 4% increase version of the budget was DOA.
Rove, alarmed, cut it back to 0.5% but, given the level of anger over this from the fully roused conservative base (led by Rush and some neo-cons and with Liberty Caucus plotting at a private location), Rove came up with the idea of pledging these spending limits to try to placate the base and keep the GOP Congress from really hacking into this bloated budget. One of Rove's primary objectives is to make sure that Bush is seen as leading the party, not that the party is leading him and, to Rove, this leadership focus is politically more important than the actual size of the budget.
Seen in this light, the pledge for the spending caps is an attempt to persuade the GOP Congress to at least keep the 0.5% discretionary spending increase in and not cut it by more than that. More importantly, it keeps Bush 'leading' the party. Not being led by the Congress, or by Rush, or by the conservative base.