Posted on 03/16/2009 7:48:46 AM PDT by Liz
EXCERPT Though neocons formed a kind of Praetorian Guard around John McCain during his campaign, their truculent approach to foreign affairs sabotaged rather than strengthened McCain’s appeal. The best that Sarah Palin, a foreign-policy neocon on training wheels, could do was to offer platitudes about standing by Israel. It seems safe to say, then, that the neocon credo is ready to be put out to pasture.
Or is it? One problem with this line of argument is that it’s been heard before—sometimes from the neoconservatives themselves. In 1988, after George H.W. Bush replaced Ronald Reagan, neocon lioness Midge Decter fretted, “are we a long, sour marriage held together for the kids and now facing an empty nest?”
Then in the late 1990s, Norman Podhoretz delivered a valedictory for neoconservatism at the American Enterprise Institute. Neoconservatism, he announced, was a victim of its success. It no longer represented anything unique because the GOP had so thoroughly assimilated its doctrines.
In 2004, a variety of commentators scrambled to pronounce a fresh obituary for neoconservatism. The disastrous course of the Iraq War, Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím said, showed that the neoconservative dream had expired in the sands of Araby.
Yet the neocons show few signs of going away. The Iraq surge was devised by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and spearheaded by William Luti, a protégé of Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney who is currently at the National Security Council.
Its success has prompted some neocons to claim vindication for the Iraq War overall. Nor has the network of institutions that the neocons rely upon melted away, from the Hudson Institute, where Scooter Libby and Douglas J. Feith are now ensconced, to the Weekly Standard and Fox News.
It’s also the case that the realists inside the GOP feel more embattled than ever. Sen. Chuck Hagel has pretty much resigned from the GOP itself as well as from his Senate seat, denouncing Rush Limbaugh and others as retrograde conservatives.
They have undeniably suffered a number of setbacks. The sun has set on the flagship neocon newspaper, the New York Sun, a victim of the financial crash.
The citadel of neoconservatism, AEI, has ousted Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, and Reuel Marc Gerecht. Meanwhile, Robert Kagan has incorporated realist tenets into his writings, while David Frum, who co-wrote with Richard Perle the standard neocon foreign-policy text, An End to Evil, and who previously demanded the expulsion of allegedly unpatriotic conservatives from the conservative pantheon (a move Russell Baker called reminiscent of the Moscow purges), now seems to be hinting at, among other things, a reassessment of neocon foreign policy. “I cannot be blind,” he conceded in a farewell address to National Review Online last month, “to the evidence … that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would have wished to see.”
Looking ahead, the neocons do not have an obvious horse. In the past they have glommed on to everyone from Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson to Colin Powell, whom William Kristol briefly touted for president. Another problem is that George W. Bush himself has increasingly deviated from neoconservatism.
With the fall of Donald Rumsfeld, on whom the neocons tried to blame the mismanaged Iraq War, Vice President Dick Cheney has lost out to the combination of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Even Kristol seems to have shed some of his habitual fervor, musing about the shortcomings of capitalism in his New York Times column and expressing the hope that Obama will put aright what has gone wrong.
The result has been something of an identity crisis in the ranks of the neocons. Like not a few revolutionary movements that have fallen on hard times, neoconservatism is experiencing a schism. Two camps are starting to face off over the question of the true faith, with the first embracing orthodoxy and the second heresy. The question they face is simple: Should the neocons continue to move right, serving as the advance guard of an embattled GOP? Or should neoconservatism become true to itself by returning to the center?
Will the movement, in fact, morph back into what it was at its inception in the late 1960s when it belonged firmly to the Democratic Party—moderate on domestic issues and mildly hawkish on foreign policy? --SNIP--
I asked for a link.
The premise of your article is confusing and you make it more so, might you not concede that you might be the better revising your premise?
I asked for a link.
What were they called when they were in the democrat party?
neodems?
You, liz, are the only person on the planet using the trashy sophmoronic term pukeneo. And you do so like a garbage worker throwing every piece of misceleneous trash into the same receptacle. Pukeneo?
William Kristol ; “The day after McCain won in New Hampshire, Kristol wrote an obituary in the Washington Post: “Leaderless, rudderless and issueless, the conservative movement ... is finished.”
Any reasonable person would deduce that the statement was made in despair and dissapointment.
I know of not one person here at FreeRepublic who was satisfied. Had I posted that day I might have said the same thing. I think you have got your panties in a bunch over nothing, over a quote made famous by Eric Alterman, aka conehead.
But some Gordon Gekko Greed is Good types thought why should the public sector have all the fun? When Madoff was head of the NASD, we all followed the rules he flagrantly broke (consider he made not one trade, not one, in the one group). It was too easy. Now it's find the money (which won't be found).
Firmbss, love the Haiku. It was the best 3 card Monty game in town. Poof! Like hiding a toy from a baby, where'd it go?
“Will the movement, in fact, morph back into what it was at its inception in the late 1960s when it belonged firmly to the Democratic Party—moderate on domestic issues and mildly hawkish on foreign policy?”
What were they called when they were in the democratic party? Neodems?
Surely you can spare the time to give us the historical grouping before they left and became famous.
He did not “write it” in the Washington Post. No wonder your article is so difficult to figure out, your sources are all mixed up pukeneo this Wahington Post that, trotskyite what?
The word does not mean what you say it means.
I love these threads, too.
Nice to see who comes out of the woodwork---who is being tasked to conduct surveillance (to protect the neo operation).
Wonder how much they get paid to put down the peons' rebellion?
Mmmmmmm.........the Neo Fellaters Relay Teams are a riot. They are stupefyingly convinced of their own superiority.
NO ONE is EVER allowed to say a discouraging word about these "perfect specimens."
Least of all the Republican so/cons they despise....who might muck up their (cough) "plans."
Expect a lot more sequels to this thread (grin).
Damn, I gotta write that down...
Shucks.......sittin' chere in may double-wide wit my car up on bricks longside mah lean-to......I jest keep furgettin'....
Lordy, lordy, lordy.
If'n I may quote you........"we shouldn't ever EVER ever connect Dickie Perle's foreign policy positions to his self-interest in Kazakhstan oil deals.......... or consider it anything more than the 'selfless altruism' of the United States."
Amen.
It would be apropos to include links to this pair of insightful articles from Thomas Sowell -
Your language is stuff I can't mention here, and your opinions are more disgusting than stuff I can't mention here. Get a life, you piece of stuff I can't mention here.
You're very welcome!
It is a very important point to understand who they are and what is their agenda.
We can't win if we are fighting the wrong enemy.
It is funny that you mentioned your conversion at the time of Jimmy Carter. That was about when I started paying attention to what politicians were saying. I remember thinking; Jimmy Carter is promising everybody something, so he can't possibly be telling the truth, because it is utterly impossible for him to make good on all those promises.
BTW: I have been an ardent student of politics for about 17 years now. I read lots and have learned lots.
I think you're right. The left has made lots of hay by co-opting the language, and by using certain terms and phrases they hear, and by changing the meaning or context, they can use it to their advantage.
Another important point to remember is that the MSM lives in a "sound-bite" world. They are happy to repeat almost anything that puts conservatives in a bad light, including, but not limited to bastardizing the language.
That is reason enough to pay attention to what is being done to our language.
They were called war hawks, and their agenda then, as now, was to help bring about a new world order with a global goverment.
Think of them as United Nations cheerleaders.
Please read today's posts, as I was not keeping up with this thread overnight.
Please ping me when you post another installment?
I suppose you think Liz has simply made it all up.
Good thing you can't actually read anything here, or then you really would become offended.
You get down on the ground, roll around in muck getting filth all over you - and the pig just enjoins it.
No offense to pigs ;-)
N-i-c-e deconstruction-----brilliant insights.
So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and blush (grin).
Socratic method--- nice going.
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