“You should say from liberal interventionist to neocon is not that big a step.”
That’s a good point. Neoconservatism originated with liberals and even Trotskyite leftists who were foreign policy hawks. They advocated the Liberal Internationalism that guided American foreign policy from WWII right on through the end of Vietnam.
Neoconservatism was a reaction against ‘Blame America First’ liberals who believe that America is the destabilizing, if not evil, force in world politics. (If that sounds like Obama there’s a good reason for it)
With the Blame America First crowd seizing power in the Democratic Party during the 1970s the nascent Neocons found Ronald Reagan’s no nonsense foreign policy more to their liking. So they joined forces with Reagan conservatives in groups like The Committee on the Present Danger to promote a strong foreign policy. In fact they often favored a more interventionist foreign policy than Reagan.
The problem for conservatives is that Neocons still hold on to many leftist social policies and they try to promote them. They work against border control and for illegal alien amnesty. Neocons are usually just fine with gun control laws. They don’t oppose and they often promote the gay agenda. On anything touching race they will be predictably on the left even though ‘civil rights’ regulations have been a major force for increasing government intrusion in everyday life.
They aren’t lockstep on this of course, but on most domestic and social issues Neocons are far more in line with liberal Democrats than they are with conservatives. It’s on economic and especially foreign policy issues that they will join with conservatives.
About 1986, Joe Lieberman formed the DLC on the premise that if the democrat party keeps running leftist/populist/socialist candidates like Mondale against moderate republicans like Reagan, the dems would never hold the presidency again.
Bill Clinton replaced Lieberman as head of the DLC and then became prez, the 3rd way, compromising, new democrat. The left wing was displeased with Clinton over NAFTA and welfare reform so they started calling the DLC the republican wing of the democrat party.
So the DLC became the home of the corporatist democrats and the Liberal Interventionist foreign policy doctrine. But eventually the name DLC became a bad name and was disbanded. Nobody would serve as president of DLC with Harold Ford being the last.
The Liberal Interventionists and NeoCons often agree on foreign policy issues. They are both Idealists big on humanitarianism, nation building, spreading democracy, and regime change.
But they differ in that the liberal Interventionists are multilateralists and the NeoCons are unilateralists.