The originals were Cold War Democrats who couldn't abide the weak America foreign policy of McGovern and Carter and decided to back Reagan in 1980.
They rebranded themselves as neoconservatives, a name which some of the hyena pack that used to run here insisted was an antiSemitic slur; a good trick since neoconservatives adopted that name for themselves.
The problem for the rest of us is that they didn't leave the rest of their liberal agenda behind. So with Bush Republicans you got globalism, a push for another amnesty, nation building in the Middle East, and the rest of what neoconservatives had been wanting for years. Including the war against confederate history that we are now watching play out.
This is a good article by Boyd Cathey on one aspect of what occurred:
How Neoconservatives Destroyed Southern Conservatism
Ironically, although they may appear at times in major disagreement, both the hardcore multicultural Left and the Neocon “Right” share a commitment to the globalist belief in American “exceptionalism.” In explaining this exceptionalism, they use the same language—about “equality” and “democracy” and “human rights” and “freedom,” its uniqueness to the United States, and the desirability to export its benefits. But, then, the proponents of the dominant Left and of the establishment Neocon Right will appear variously on Fox or on MSNBC, or in the pages of National Review or of The Weekly Standard, to furiously deny the meaning given by their opponents…but all the while using the same linguistic template and positing goals—in civil rights, foreign policy, etc.—which seem remarkably similar, but over which they argue incessantly about the “means.”
How Neoconservatives Destroyed Southern Conservatism
Of course it's nonsense.
The older Southern conservatism wasn't as benign as he implies.
Today conservatism in the South reflects aspects of the old and the new South more than anything alien and neoconservative.
And, overheated language aside, the author doesn't show that what he favors would be much of an improvement.
But what does it have to do with Richard Wagner?