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With or without this terminology fight, the Republican party is having an identity crisis.

It's completely appropriate to have an identity crisis if/when there are honest fundamental disagreements.

I'm not sure that's the case here. Seems to me what's happened is that the antiwar lobby misconstrued the meaning of "neo-conservative", decided they could use it to slander pro-war people because it sounds sinister, and following this a lot of anti-war conservatives bought into it.

Now we get the spectacle of seeing each and every anti-war conservative spout off about what "their" personal definition of "neocon" is. It's embarrassing, but I'm not sure it's a big fundamental split here. Articles like the above may be able to make some headway in clearing up the mis-labelling that has taken place. I can hope...

I can tell you that all pro-war "conservatives" are not equal in their conservatism, imo. I'm a pro-war conservative myself, but I am not hostile to the anti's. Most of them are not knee-jerk anti's. They were just against this war. They were both wrong and irritating on the issue, but does it really matter now that the war is over?

As far as those being labeled "paleo-con," I think it's really dumb to make enemies of all of them. Some are an embarrassment, but not all. I'd like to take some from each group and form a new group myself, one that doesn't mind war debate.