Where Have All the Neocons Gone? (who cares---just get 'em out of OUR party)

The American Conservative ^ | January 12, 2009 | Jacob Heilbrunn

[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--

[Liz]

Thanks.

[Deb]

Yeah, well you continue on your little path, and you'll get nowhere without the Specter and Snowes because, for right now, we need their bodies in the Senate in order to reach a majority (if we ever get there). Without a majority we can't control the Senate's agenda which keeps the impure from doing the damage they do.

You need to worry less about individuals (who will always disappoint) and worry more about regaining the majority.

Liberal states will always elect liberal Republicans.

[Designer]

Liz, please accept my sincere thanks and plaudits to you for the post.

[Designer]

"..you'll get nowhere without the Specter and Snowes.."

You think we need liberal Republicans, huh?

So....how's that working out for you?

Made some conservative progress, have you?

[Deb]

If you're not going read the whole post...SHUT UP!!!

[Designer]

"Liberal states will always elect liberal Republicans."

Sometimes they elect liberal democrats, but so what?

Why do we want liberals at all in Congress? How does that help?

[Liz]

Heilbrunn Reviews Neo-Con Travails
January 2, 2009
By Jim Lobe, Washington bureau chief, Inter Press News Service

EXCERPT Jacob Heilbrunn of The National Interest---related to the Nixon Center which hosted neocon Richard Perle recently-----has written two very interesting articles on the plight of the neo-cons after the Republican debacle in November 2008.

The first, published December 19, addresses the departure of Joshua Muravchik and Marc Reuel Gerecht,and the earlier departure of Michael Ledeen, from the foreign-policy ranks of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Ledeen and Gerecht found a new home at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) which is basically a version of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC). Muravchik, who, like Ledeen, had been associated with AEI for some 20 years, has apparently yet to find a new perch.

Heilbrunn suggests that these departures are evidence of an ideological purge against neo-cons.

============================

The second article by Heilbrunn appears in the Jan 12 issue of The American Conservative.

It speculates on the internal splits that the neo-cons are going through as a result of the 2008 political campaign, Obama’s victory, and the possibility that at least one major faction — headed by people like Robert Kagan, David Brooks and even David Frum — will seek to forge an alliance with liberal interventionists, presumably led by Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton (although Susan Rice also fits the bill), in the new administration...... much as they did during the Clinton administration with respect to Balkans policy.

Heilbrunn’s analysis offers a good point of departure for watching the neo-cons......as the Age of Obama gets underway.

Heilbrunn is the author of "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons."

[Deb]

Sorry, you’re just too stupid to repond to. Go read “Politics for Dummys” and try again.

[Liz]

Why do we want liberals at all in Congress? How does that help?

No more calls, please----we have a winner.

[Condor51]

• Ledeen and Gerecht found a new home at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) which is basically a version of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).
• Heilbrunn suggests that these departures are evidence of an ideological purge against neo-cons.
  
• people like Robert Kagan, David Brooks and even David Frum — will seek to forge an alliance with liberal interventionists .... much as they did during the Clinton administration with respect to Balkans policy.

---

This account has not been banned or suspended,
because...
The comment was not removed by the Moderator, but Myself!.

---

[calcowgirl]

He did not “write it” in the Washington Post.

Huh?

Leaderless, rudderless and issueless, the conservative movement, which accomplished great things over the past quarter-century, is finished. ...

... McCain and Bill Bradley who each now have a chance that occurs only once a generation--to articulate a new governing agenda for a potential new political majority.

[Designer]

"If you're not going read the whole post...SHUT UP!!!"

O.K., showing the entire post, FWIW:

Yeah, well you continue on your little path, and you'll get nowhere without the Specter and Snowes because, for right now, we need their bodies in the Senate in order to reach a majority (if we ever get there). Without a majority we can't control the Senate's agenda which keeps the impure from doing the damage they do.

You need to worry less about individuals (who will always disappoint) and worry more about regaining the majority.

Liberal states will always elect liberal Republicans.

I did read it. All of it. That is why I have a problem with your wanting to re-elect LIBERAL REPUBLICANS to the Senate.

Now supposing for a moment that we could once again have a majority of Republicans in the Senate, but that over half of them, as now, are liberals, just exactly what would be the agenda that they would push forward?

I'll shut up and let you try to answer.

[Liz]

The neos are revving-up their Big Switcheroo to Obama.

Their pal Rahm is in charge of US foreign policy, the census, and Medicare/Aid billions---all of which gets the neos salivating with anticipation.

In fact, neos have several bases of affinity with Obama.

On immigration.........neoconservatives have never abandoned their visceral liberal sympathies for the immigrant----whether from Eastern Europe, The Soviet Bloc or the Third World South of the Border.

When they controlled Bush, the pukeneos foisted amnesty on the US, saddling taxpayers with millions of drug runners and criminals undermining US ntl security, who are swilling at the public trough.

Conniving Third World lowlifes used multiple stolen identities, and stolen SS nos, to pile up toxic mortgages that have destroyed our economy.

END GAME The pukeneos destroyed the GOP, duped Bush, and sold Rummy a phony bill of goods on Iraq----- which opened the door for Obama and the Marxists.

When Obama's "Civilian Security Force" starts rounding up people for reeducation camps, neocons should go first.

The pukes should be easy to find--they're too dumb to hide.

[Designer]

"Sorry, you’re just too stupid to repond to."

Do my posts threaten your worldview?

[Designer]

"END GAME The pukeneos destroyed the GOP.."

To my new dear friends, those Lovely Conservative ladies and anybody else who cares about this country:

Akshuly, the end game is subverting our national sovreignty into a new world order with the United Nations in charge, and a new fiat currency to replace the dollar.

But other than that, have a nice day.

[Deb]

Please concentrate. (sigh) The Agenda would be whatever the majority leader says it will be. You see, the majority leader of the majority party decides which bills will be brought to the floor for consideration and what amendments are allowed...that's called The Agenda. Then the majority leader of the majority party decides how much time will be alloted for debate.

That means, the party in the majority gets to decide which direction the Senate will move. It doesn't matter that a few of the majority party's members are liberal, left-handed or smell bad, having the most members makes your party the majority.

So you see, when the GOP was in the majority we had Specter and Snowe and Collins, but it didn't matter because we had enough of a majority to stop Clinton or to pass welfare reform, but their mere presence made us a majority.

So, it does matter whether the members are Democrats or Republicans because of what? The Agenda.

[calcowgirl]

the end game is subverting our national sovreignty into a new world order with the United Nations in charge

I agree with your observation of a new world order being their end game (or a "new global order" as McCain promoted, or "global governance" or any other host of names used). I'm less convinced that everyone wants to hand the reigns to the United Nations, as opposed to some other World governing body. McCain was pushing his "League of Democracies" and others have offered up other suggestions. It matters not, all should be vigorously fought and sovereignty defended. It is worrisome that there are so many promoting this agenda, including some on FR who dare to call themselves "conservatives."

P.S. Thanks for your calm and reasoned posts on this thread, despite the trash hurled your way. Hopefully some lurkers learned a thing or two.

[Designer]

"Please concentrate. (sigh) The Agenda would be whatever the majority leader says it will be."

Oh, thanks, dear lady. What would I do without your kind indulgence?

I just hope that when we get another majority in congress, that the leaders are conservatives, and not liberals.

[Designer]

"a "new global order" as McCain promoted"

Yes, and who can forget G.H.W. Bush announcing his goal of a "New World Order".

He wasn't the first, and he isn't the last.

[TheFourthMagi]

Neocon: for liberal positions on social issues, for trickle down economics, and for an interventionist foreign policy.