Are You Ready to Rumble?

President Bush’s re-election doesn’t mean that real differences don’t still exist within the broader conservative movement. The NYT reports here on the continuing struggle between conservatives who supported the Iraq war and the “antiwar Right”:

The euphoria of Mr. Bush’s victory postponed the battle, but not for long. Now that Mr. Bush has secured re-election, some conservatives who say they held their tongues through the campaign season are speaking out against the neoconservatives, against the war and in favor of a speedy exit.

They argue that the war is a political liability to the Republican Party, but also that it runs counter to traditional conservatives’ disdain for altruist interventions to make far-off parts of the world safe for American-style democracy. Their growing outspokenness recalls the dynamics of American politics before Vietnam, when Democrats first became identified as doves and Republicans hawks, suggesting to some the complicated political pressures facing the foreign policy of the second Bush administration.

The question is: how much of the opposition to the war is the disaffection of a handful of conservative intellectuals and activists compared to that at the grass-roots level?