Addressing Republican activists at the county conventions here and in next-door Spartanburg, Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour characterized the $40 billion cuts as a worthy step in the right direction — but were quick to note looming, and larger, fights over the debt ceiling and the House GOP’s budget proposal for next year.

“This is a building block,” Gingrich told delegates at the Greenville convention, adding that: “The next big step is the debt ceiling.”

From the same podium, Barbour said: “You can’t get always everything you want at the first time at bat, but the good news is Boehner and these good Republicans have left us two more times at bat just in this inning.”

But Rick Santorum, who is working assiduously to woo conservatives, didn’t even bring up the compromise in either of his two speeches.

The response to Gingrich and Barbour’s measured words for the deal made clear why.

The duo received mostly silence as they gingerly explained why the agreement was worthwhile — a vivid illustration of how little appetite the conservative grassroots of the party have for compromise on spending.

“This is a loaf we’ve got to be willing to eat one slice at a time,” said Barbour to silence.

Meanwhile, tea party favorites Michele Bachmann and Rand Paul, casting actual votes in Washington, went the other way.

“The deal that was reached tonight is a disappointment for me and for millions of Americans who expected $100 billion in cuts, who wanted to make sure their tax dollars stopped flowing to the nation’s largest abortion provider, and who wanted us to defund ObamaCare,” Bachmann said in a statement.

Paul voted against the short-term resolution that will give negotiators time to hash out the larger deal.

“As I have said before,” he said in a statement, “there is not much of a difference between a $1.5 trillion deficit and a $1.6 trillion deficit – both will lead us to a debt crisis that we may not recover from.”

Talking to reporters after a speech Saturday, Barbour offered a rhetorical shrug.

“Compromises don’t usually get people to stand up in their chair and do flips regardless of what the compromise is about,” he said. “I though Boehner did very wisely, he took this is as far he could go, he made real savings, real cuts.”

In a brief interview, Gingrich offered a small measure more praise than he did in his remarks.

“It’s a reasonably good deal in a situation where Boehner doesn’t have the Senate and doesn’t have the White House,” he said, noting the commitment the House GOP got for a Senate vote on barring federal dollars to Planned Parenthood and the provision included in the final deal that would deny any taxpayer money to Washington, D.C. for abortion.

Gingrich added: “My answer to people who’d like a better deal is: good, lets beat the 23 Democratic senators that are up and beat Obama and we’ll get a lot better deal.”

Santorum, in an interview before addressing the crowd in Spartanburg, said: “I think we should be fighting over principle not money. When you’re fighting over a billion dollars her and billion dollars there it can get lost to folks. My feeling is we should be fighting over Obamacare — that’s really the most salient issue in the country right now.”

The Pennsylvanian allowed that the $40 million cut was “a step in the right direction,” but said if people don’t understand the more fundamental issues at stake in the battle “it just looks like accountants arguing with one another.”