BALTIMORE – For a large core of conservatives, the race to replace Rep. Tom DeLay, a Republican of Texas, as House majority leader is not just about who will help guide the party, but about what kind of party it should be.

These conservatives, long disillusioned by the GOP drift toward backing big government spending and approving local improvement projects known as “earmarks,” hope that whoever wins Thursday’s three-way contest to succeed Mr. DeLay will do far more than help reform congressional ethics and lobbying rules.

They want the new leader to renew the party’s commitment to its core principles of fiscal restraint and small government.

“We will seek to marry fiscal and ethical reform,” said Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican of Indiana, head of the Republican Study Committee, an influential conservative faction that describes itself as the “majority of the majority” in the House.

Added Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Republican of Texas: “I don’t know how you have any lobbying reform without earmark reform. One of the root causes of the problem [facing Congress] is not how lobbyists spend their money, it’s how we’re spending the people’s money.”

Members of study committee got to drive home its demands yesterday when they questioned the contenders for majority leader – Reps. Roy Blunt of Missouri, who is temporarily filling the post, John Boehner of Ohio and John Shadegg of Arizona – at the group’s annual policy retreat in Baltimore.

The sessions were closed, but according to comments the candidates made to reporters, each pledged to push for an overhaul of ethics and lobbying rules to distance Congress from scandals that some Republicans fear threaten their majorities in the House and Senate.

But for the more than 60 conservatives at the gathering, banning lawmakers from taking trips financed by interest groups or accepting meals paid for by lobbyists were almost beside the point.

Republicans must “return to the core agenda that brought us into the majority,” said Rep. Zach Wamp, a Republican of Tennessee. “We have to go back to the basics and start fresh. People have to check their guts this week to decide what’s in our best interest.”

The chastened mood among the conservatives stood in stark contrast to the jubilant atmosphere that marked their retreat a year ago, after President Bush had won re-election and pledged to push for a sweeping restructuring of Social Security. The themes this year were reform, rebirth, and redemption.

“Their survival instincts are on high alert,” said Mike Franc, vice president for Congressional affairs at the Heritage Foundation,the conservative think tank that underwrites the retreats.

At the same time, Mr. Franc said, the study group believes that its calls for slashing government spending and taxes are gaining fresh momentum in a party groping to fashion a new image and message for voters before the November elections.

“The Republican Party right now is facing a serious identity crisis,” said Michael Tanner,a policy analyst with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

In his view – as well as others – the race to replace Mr. DeLay reflects the alternative paths available to the GOP.

He said Mr. Blunt, a DeLay ally who has been serving as temporary majority leader, “is clearly in the camp of the leadership that has been much more willing to spend money and increase the size of government.Mr.Shaddeg is clearly on the side of small government, with Mr. Boehner somewhere in between.”