Earlier this week, I noted that there weren’t very many Tea Partiers and constitutional conservatives speaking out against the Libyan war. I found this disappointing, because the Libyan war seems the perfect opportunity for them to translate their critique of Obama’s other policies and their opposition to him into a foreign policy position on a new, significant issue. Red Phillips objected:

I have actually been encouraged by the conservative response. The best way I can think of to describe the conservative reaction to Libya is all over the map. No it hasn’t been the universal condemnation that we would like, but that would be expecting too much. But neither has there been near universal approval as there was for Iraq.

From what I have been able to gather, Phillips is correct that the reaction is all over the map. This is confirmed by anecdotal accounts I’ve heard, and it appears to be supported by the most recent polling. According to Rasmussen, conservatives are slightly less likely to support the Libyan war than the public as a whole: 39% support it, 41% are against it, and 21% are unsure whether they support it or not. So, yes, that is an improvement from the two-to-one conservative support that the Iraq war continued to receive up until now, and as the Libyan war continues it is possible that most of the remaining 21% will turn against the war.

Even so, opposition to the Libyan war should be much greater. Everything that conservatives dislike about Obama is on display here, the war serves no national interest, and the manner in which Obama is waging the war is practically designed to rile the American right with its emphasis on U.N. authorization, the “responsibility to protect,” and the willingness to let other governments publicly lead the effort. There is virtually no other action that Obama has taken that wins the support of almost 40% of conservatives, but Iraq and the Bush years have had such a corrosive effect that a war that even some apologists of the Bush Doctrine find reckless gets considerable backing from conservatives.

Unfortunately, the political effect of this split is to force Tea Party groups and Tea Party-aligned politicians not to stake out strong positions in opposition to the war, because there are large constituencies that support and oppose attacking Libya. Instead of being the perfect opportunity to stake out a principled, consistent critique of at least certain forms of interventionist wars, the divisions on the right make strong positions either way politically controversial and risky. At a moment when the country needs forthright criticism from conservatives against Obama’s outrageous decision, we are likely to get a muddled, weakened response.

There is another encouraging sign: 62% of conservatives agree that Obama should have sought Congressional approval, which is far higher than among most other groups except Republicans (63%). We can’t tell how much of the 41% conservative opposition to the war stems from Obama’s failure to seek Congressional authorization rather than an objection to the decision to intervene as such, and we can’t know how much of this is a genuine objection to unconstitutional behavior and how much of this is simple partisanship, but it’s something. One thing that Obama’s arbitrary decision to start a new war may do is to force conservatives to think more seriously about the dangers of unchecked executive power. If the Libyan war can get more people on the right to challenge outrageous claims of inherent executive powers, it will have had one good effect on political debate here at home.