The Run Paul experts on conservatism here today would call Ronald Reagan a neo-con. Of course, he’d have smiled and said something amiable in return to their nasty remarks and ugly outlooks.
On foreign policy he was, as far from Reagan as you can get.
If you check Christian Science Monitors Empire Builders-Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US Power, ten of the twelve, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton (the token non-Jew), Robert Kagan, Michael Ledeen, Lewis Libby, William Kristol, and Frank Gaffney Jr., served in the Reagan administration. Norman Podhoretz was an advisor to USAID, if he was paid that makes 11.
Clearly the neocon hijacking of the Bush administration was the blowback of the Reagan administration.