ABC News: Conservatives “Taking Sides” On Egypt, Setting Up “Rift” Between Beck, Kristol

From a February 10 item on ABC News' The Note:

Conservatives are taking sides, lining up behind two of the biggest names on the American right as a tiff over the crisis in Egypt this week turned into a national debate about who speaks for the movement.

In one corner, Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard , Fox News contributor and dauphin of American neoconservatism. In the other corner Glenn Beck, the emotive host of his own Fox News program and Tea Party standard bearer.

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Conservatives are taking sides, setting up a rift between old-school neocons like Kristol and Tea Party types like Beck.

Predictably, it's those old-school conservatives who are glad to see Beck taken down a notch.

Writing in the National Review, Bill Lowry said Kristol took “a well-deserved shot at Glenn Beck's latest wild theorizing.”

In Commentary, Bill Whener called Beck's attack “childish and churlish” and compared the talk show host's theory about an international caliphate to a “fever dream” that connects the dots “of a massive and astonishingly well-organized conspiracy.”

On the other side, Aaron Klein writing for arch-conservative website WorldNetDaily wrote simply: “I feel compelled to join Glenn Beck's side.”

The rift comes as Beck has seen a dramatic drop in his ratings and other feuds – most recently between Sarah Palin and former Sen. Rick Santorum – expose fissures in conservative America's usually lockstep message.