A strange thing has happened on the way to the revolution to streamline and shrink government. Conservatives have begun battling one another like never before. All it seems to take is a difference of opinion for someone to wildly denounce another as an ideological turncoat worthy of exile, excommunication or extermination.

Which raises the question: What is true conservatism today? At times the concept seems unmoored, battered between ideologues for whom compromise is treasonous; pragmatists who know they must wheel and deal to gain even some of what they seek; and the play-actors who grandstand to score political points for their re-election bids. Such turmoil deeply challenges conservative thinking.

Only the other day, I was talking ideology with one of our most resolutely conservative readers when she vigorously dismissed the idea that Gov. Rick Perry is a conservative — yes, Rick Perry, darling of social conservatives nationwide and enemy of government overreach. She said he showed his true colors back when pushing the much-vilified Trans-Texas Corridor project.

I guess I never thought about highway construction in conservative vs. liberal terms, but the ill-fated corridor project did provoke uproar aplenty about property rights, eminent domain, a secret contract with a Spanish consortium and what many labeled government overreach.

Nowhere is this split in conservative ranks more apparent than the ongoing battle to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit. Exhibit A: the feud between U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who got a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union last year, and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who heads up the powerful Americans for Tax Reform.

Coburn, a physician and abortion foe, isn’t exactly loved in local circles, even among conservatives, because of his role in blocking efforts to transform the Waco Mammoth Site into a national monument. “Dr. No” made it clear that adding one more national monument to those sites maintained and staffed by the National Park Service was fiscally imprudent.

Hate Coburn if you must. But there’s absolutely no denying his fiscally conservative principles. Or is there?

For months Coburn has been cobbling together plans to make massive cuts in runaway spending. Last week he unveiled one plan that freezes the pay of Congress and all federal employees for three years, lays off 300,000 from the federal workforce, cuts a trillion dollars from defense and revamps very popular entitlements. But the plan also carves out $990 billion in revenue by gutting special interest tax breaks — a no-no in Norquist’s book.

To Norquist’s thinking (at least most of the time), even gutting a tax break represents a tax hike — which, strictly speaking, is true for the industry that has been receiving the tax break. And because so many Republican leaders have signed his anti-tax pledge, they’re at the mercy of whatever Norquist deems fit on the matter.

So who is the real conservative in this dustup: Norquist or Coburn?

Consider U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee conservative who joined fellow Republicans in supporting the “cut, cap and balance” debt bill, yet was one of only two to stand by his guns this month and vote against the popular Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act. He attacked the hypocrisy of those who rail loudly against runaway spending, then vote for more spending bills when trillions in debt loom and the nation’s fiscal house is so completely out of order.

Republicans and Democrats meanwhile scrambled to send press releases out about their votes, testifying to their patriotism.

Consider, too, Reps. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, and John Carter, R-Round Rock, stalwart local conservatives against tax hikes and runaway spending in the debt ceiling fight. Yet both voted for a defense bill this month boosting annual spending by $17 billion. It included, among other things, $320 million for military bands.

The bill cut that amount to $200 million — hardly a trifle — but Carter restored another $120 million for bands. He defended this expense by noting how military bands are an “integral part of the patriotism that keeps our soldiers’ hearts beating fast.”

This congressional gesture got my heart beating fast, too, but hardly for the same reason.