The New Conservative Divide: Paleocons versus Neocons

AmericanDaily.com ^ | Mon Apr 21, 2003 | Rachel Alexander

[A. Pole]

This split is far from being significant politically; the isolationist paleocons are very few in number, and most will vote for a GOP neocon come election day.

It is true that 15% who initially supported Buchanan voted for Bush. This together with Naderites being more rigid, prevented landslide victory for Gore.

But next time I would not take such development for granted. Democrats can find someone more palatable for Naderites and paleocons can stay home. It is economy stupid.

[Mr. Mojo]

exactly zero percent of American Jews voted for Reagan in 1988.

Read the 8th paragraph from the bottom, starting with the word "Historically."

And this article just happened to be the first source that came up on Google; there are a lot more sources confirming this. As painful as it may be to you, around one third of American Jews voted for Reagan in '88. Deal with it.

[Consort]

This is a Mort Sahl kind of thread.

[Constitution Day]

( grin )

Ain't I a stinker?

[Ronaldus Magnus]

So you wrote him in? I would have voted for him too had he been on the ballot. Darn that 22nd amendment!!!

[Mr. Mojo]

LOL.....Sorry about that.

[JohnGalt]

"Only 20% of American Jews voted for President Bush, actually down from the 35% who voted for Reagan in 1988,"


Pretty good showing for a guy who wasn't running...

Secondly, the author uses the absurd term anti-Israel which is ridiculous. There are plenty of paleoconservatives who are anti-extreme rightwing of Israel, but I have yet to come across a paleo-conservative who was anti-Israel.

[reelfoot]

I don't care much for labels, but most certainly AM interested in "dismantling the entrenched programs of the New Deal." (See article.) If "neocons" are not interested in ridding this country of socialistic programs, they may be "neo" but they surely are not conservative. There may be those who want to return the federal government to its constitutional limits who hate blacks and/or Jews. If so, they should renounce such hatred. By the same token, any neocons who believe our great presidents are Lincoln, Wilson, F. Roosevelt, and Johnson should renounce their big central government views and adopt conservatism.

[Brian S]

The left has simply come aboard to the winning side, and are working to damage the right from within....

I tend to agree with this statement.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Why this obsession on labels?

The left practicing the politics of personal destruction as usual, the deceitful, name-calling Clymer-Rat-Wankers.

What would be the opposite of "Neo-cons":
"Hoary Marxists",
"Moldering Marxists",
"Senile Socialists",
"Antediluvian Dems"?

[salmon76]

"Why can't we all just get along!"

I really don't like quoting liberals, but it seems so fitting.

[wrbones]

Just wondering.

I figger the Democrats got hijacked by left wing extremists years ago and the real Democrats had to go somewhere else. "POOF" neo-conservatives. I used to be a Democrat, but they moved on me and someone else started using their name. Makes me wonder if the government/alien conspiracys aren't true after all.......

Anymore when I compare myself to Democrats, I find I'm a little right of center, when I used to be considered more of a 'liberal'. I didn't change anything about what I believed politically!

Actually, I'm sometimes quite confused. The way Democrats are today, I think I need a lawn chair, a case of beer and a reservation at a certain mailbox out in the desert.....Where I discuss government conspiracy theories with Bubba and his old lady. In today's world, I would be consiodered a 'moderate' but if the left gets too much worse, I may have to move to Idaho and build a plywood compound...and never have to change where I'm at politically!!

I wonder if the FBI will sell me any illegal firearms when I get there.....

[Stultis]

Neo-cons are not conservative.

Jean Kirkpatrick, Reagan's top foreign policy advisor, is not conservative?
Charles Krauthammer is not conservative?
Richard Perle is not conservative?

One could even argue that Ronald Reagan himself was a neocon (although he left the Democratic Party earlier than most historical neocons).

[George W. Bush]

However, paleocon views have become more popular since 9/11,...

Oh, bunk. If anything, it's the neo-cons who have triumphed overwhelmingly. And a good thing too.

Furthermore, the paleocons are not completely marginalized, they count among their numbers several respected intellectual heavyweights, including the Rockford Institute, LewRockwell.com, and to some degree, the paleolibertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute.

LewRockwell.com is an intellectual heavyweight? Rockford who no one has ever heard of? I suppose some people have heard of von Mises but it's pretty limited in influence even now. To compare any of them to, say, Heritage or the other big think tanks is just ridiculous.

The author went looking for a controversy and failed to find one so one had to be manufactured, I think.

[tdadams]

Ha ha. I'd never heard of cruchy conservatives. If I recycle and eat a semi-vegetarian diet, would that make me a crunchy conservative?

[FairOpinion]

Whatever happened to just being "conservative"? What happened to "moderates" or "moderately conservatives"? Why do we have to have neo-con and paleo-con labels?

I think the media is the one promoting the "paleo" and "neo" labels, to try to "divide and conquer" the conservatives.

As for quoting the dictionary definition of paleoconservatives is ridiculous. Look up the dictionary definition of the liberals, and you'll find there is no relationship between today's liberals and the dictionary definion of the word. And neither is between the dictionary definitions of conservatives and political conservatives.

[billbears]

As painful as it may be to you, around one third of American Jews voted for Reagan in '88. Deal with it.

Why would one third of all Jewish people vote for a man who wasn't even running in 1988? Sorry, I just don't understand

[Hoppean]

The Old Right scholar M.E. Bradford discusses the Left's infiltration of the conservative movement (as "neocons") in his book, _The Reactionary Imperative_.

Here's a key excerpt:

"There are, to be sure, certain groups who have recently attached the conservative label to themselves…because it allows them to so redefine our position that we can no longer hold it for our own—allows them to steal our identity and put it to uses at variance with its origins: to invert it into something foreign to itself, leaving those who are still conservatives in the familiar sense of the term with no ground on which to stand. These interlopers want to get their agenda defined as axiomatic by leaving no useful space to their right; and they want all the persuasive advantages that come, in a post-liberal era, of calling their view conservative regardless of its essentially statist…and coercively egalitarian implications…. Our first priority is to refuse firmly and vigorously to surrender our hard-won identity to those who would use it as a cloak for policies contrary to what we intend. Lines of demarcation must be drawn, and swiftly."

And another:

"Conservatives who worry about the craft of governing are often paralyzed with the fear of being disreputable. Their primary nightmare is that of being accused of bigotry, war-mongering, insensitivity, and indifference to suffering, of being identified as persons without ordinary human fellow-feeling. And thus they are diverted from their first order of business--to preserve, protect, and defend--by being put on the defensive, able to make only arguments which object to the labels, not analyses which discredit their opponents."

[Mr. Mojo]

Dude, I messed up .....and already admitted it.