He sided with the Conservative Nicolae Filipescu, who shared his views on the issue of Transylvania, and provoked a conflict within his grouping at a time when the PNL was strengthening itself by incorporating a large part of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party. Around 1907, seeking party leadership, he came to oppose the other main Conservative leaders Cantacuzino and Petre P. Carp — the latter represented the party's "Junimea" faction, which had just re-entered the main Conservative Party after an independent existence under the name of "Constitutional Party"; Ionescu also repeatedly clashed with the other Constitutional leader, the influential literary critic Titu Maiorescu. Constantin Xeni, his future collaborator, argued that "the boyar wing of Conservative Party had made life impossible for this son of an obscure bourgeois from Ploieşti".