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--
Social conservatives: A “neocon” is any Republican who isn't a social conservative. Also termed “RINOs”, even if their views are overwhelmingly in line with traditional GOP values, these people must either fall in line with what social conservatives want or be driven out of the party. The article above demonstrates this definition.
Foreign-policy isolationists and Democrats: A “neocon” is anyone who supports the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in general favors a muscular foreign policy. This is the definition used mostly in the media, by Hollywood anti-war types, etc. There is also a segment within this group who use the term “neocon” as a code word for “Jew” - many prominent neoconservatives such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolflowitz are Jewish.”
I think one problem is the mis-application of the term to liberal republicans....
Powell is a liberal republican, bush is a moderate...neither are neo-cons...
A liberal democrat who turns into a liberal republican (such as spector) isnt a new Conservative...he's just a lib with an R instead of D....a “me too rebublican” or what used to be called a “Rockefeller republican”...
These are the one’s embarrassed to be in the same party as pro-lifers, pro gunners, and pro states rights....
I think the term RINO is appropriate for a liberal republican.
A they have little resemblance to the core ideals for which they claim to stand with...
If I liked Sarah Palin, am I a neo-con? If I favored the surge and winning in Iraq, am I a neo-con? If I favor America and American sovereignty, am I a neo-con? If I dislike everything Michael Steele has done/said so far, am I a neo-con?
Would someone please explain this gobbledy-gook to me?!"
Dear Confused:
Boy! You really ARE confused!
Aside from the fact that the definition of Neo-Con has been posted here many times before, I see that there are still plenty of people who were absent that day. So here goes: (again)
The neocons were (and still are) liberals who left the democrat party when the democrat party "went soft" on war by nominating George McGovern.
The neocons migrated to the Republican party in order to make sure their version of foreign policy continued to have legs. They originated the term, not us. We are not attempting to disparage someone based upon religious or ethnic background. The term is purely political, not "racist". It has nothing whatsoever with anyone who recently converted to conservativsm. I know of absolutely no example of anyone who is actually conservative being a neocon, unless they are just too ignorant to know anything about it, and they end up empowering the neocons out of their own ignorance.
As I get very tired of trying to educate folks who just don't give a rat's behind about facts, I suggest that you don't take my word for it, but do some reading on your own.
Think of it as "homework" and your grade in freedom hinges on whether you can understand who is our enemy, and who is our friend.
To each his own.
Well said.
Please enlighten us on what a "neo-con" is, and what makes this term valid?
If support for the New American Century is a test for being a neocon, I guess I can be painted as a neocon. The New American Century project was about who was going to lead in the 21st century and to take steps to see that it was going to be America. The other options were China, Russia or maybe India.
Do I agree with all of the people that have been thrown in the neocon soup or those mistakenly tagged with the neocon label by berserk leftists with neocon semi-automatic sticker guns? Nope.
Frankly I'm sick of the word as it has been so misused as to make it totally worthless.
So, let me ask you, who should go to war with Iran before they get a nuke?
Ideally the US and Israel in cooperation with Iranian dissidents and Military defectors. If you want... let's call it a large-scale replay on 1953 with some bunker-busting.
you call him a kook and make him a Nazi.
Where did I call anyone a Nazi?
et tu, rdb3?
No, NOT "exactly".
All FReepers who might actually want to learn something, please go back and read post #42, by yours truly.
Take Pat Buchanan’s isolationist crap elsewhere, please.
Oh, sorry, I have a rather low tolerance for willful ignorance.
Petronski, you're a regular poster, so why haven't you learned the definition of neocon before today?
Neo-con is an epithet thrown at those who disagree and/or those who are Jooooos. Identifying "neocons" is little more than a game of "spot the Jooooooo."
Another sure sign that one has nothing better to say.
Whatever that unified answer may be, one thing I have noticed: "dittohead" seems to be replacing "neocon" as the slur of choice in lib circles...
Mostly it is used against Conservatives who are willing to use the military power we still have.
Neocons? Excuse me, but weren't neocons in lockstep with Rummy?
I may not always agree with the neocons, whoever they are, and whatever that means, but I understand their sentiments: The hegemony of the US throughout the world is a good thing. The fluff from Frumesque fruitcakes wanting to liberalize conservatism, the RINOcons, is beyond understanding. The RINOcons are the Republicans who gave us McCain, and caused the Neocons to defend him, while they slipped off and voted for 0. At least that’s how I see it this morning, so far.
The problem is that the term is not always (rarely?) used properly. It has become much the same as the term "RINO" in that it's now a rather generic epithet, thrown around for precisely the reasons I and others have pointed out: The two parts evoke negative associations.
"Neo-" hearkens back to "Neo-Nazi", easily the most common political use of the "Neo" prefix prior to "Neo-con".
"Con" conjures up "Con-man" and "Ex-con". Nobody uses "con" to mean "conservative".
That the term was coined by the original "Neo-cons" themselves is, unfortunately, beside the point. It now has a very diluted meaning, is used by different people and for entirely different reasons than when its life began.
No wonder you're so confused so often.
So what is the definition of a neo-con?
A superb post.
Prepare to be called willfully ignorant for refusing to parrot the “official” definition.
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