In Columbus, Lansing, and Phoenix, Republican governors are making headlines by embracing part of Obamacare. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are making headlines by seeking a new fiscal deal that avoids Pentagon cuts. What do these developments have to do with one another? Everything. They are products of the same, emerging divide in the Republican Party—one that pits conservative ideologues who preach anti-government extremism against some similarly conservative officials who actually have to govern.

The two sides might not admit that such a sharp divide exists. But it’s easy to see if you’ve been following either story. In Washington, the source of controversy is the budget “sequestration,” the automatic spending cuts set to take effect on March 1. Roughly half of the cuts would affect defense spending, starting with $50 billion this year and adding up to about a half trillion dollars over the next decade. Republicans are desperate to find an alternative, but that would require making a deal with President Obama and the Democrats.

The question, for Republicans, is what concessions they’re willing to make. Obama and the Democrats have said any deal must include new revenue. The ideologues say no way: If a deal ends up raising taxes, even through reform, then Republicans should reject it, even if that means allowing the defense cuts to take place.

Among those making that case recently were the editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, who on Thursday ran an article called “The Unscary Sequester.” The defense cuts were not ideal, the editors conceded, but “at least high priorities such as troop deployments are exempt from the cuts. And there is waste in the Pentagon.” This is also the position that House Speaker John Boehner has adopted, at least publicly. “I don’t think anyone wants to see it,” Boehner said, “but we got to get real about cutting spending. If this is the only way we can cut spending, this is what we gotta do.”

Some of Boehner’s Republican colleagues have a rather different view. “We’ve tried to replace sequester with other things, but it seems now that a large portion of our conference is [resigned] to the fact that sequestration is OK,” Pat Rooney, a Republican from Florida, said in an interview with Politico. “It’s not. It’s dangerous, a huge mistake, a threat to our liberty … and I think that we should consider any and all options that don’t include hollowing out our military.” Rooney has plenty of company, and not only in the House. In a press conference Wednesday, three high-profile Republican Senators—Lindsey Graham, Jim Inhofre, and John McCain—spoke out against the defense cuts and called for finding alternatives. “We got into this mess together,” Graham said, “and we’re going to have to get out together.”