Posted on 03/16/2009 7:48:46 AM PDT by 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--
As I have already pointed out on this thread, it is important to prepare to be called willfully ignorant for refusing to parrot the “official” definition.
Your continued use of ad hominem attacks indicates you have nothing else to say...a common affliction in certain circles.
Define “neo-con”.
If you mean someone wholly dedicated to the protection and exportation of the American way of life, by force if necessary ... then count me among them. This is the definition used by most liberals — and it includes most of the great conservative minds of the last 50 years.
If you mean a shallow, big-government, free-spending “new conservative” — then I am not among them. This is the definition used by some conservatives.
If you think they are one-in-the-same, then you are mistaken.
When we argue with vauge terminology, people read into your cryptic labels whatever they want.
SnakeDoc
How do you stop it? I would have been honored to be called a liberal 200 years ago.
It must be dismantled immediately.
Schnell!
Your keyboard only works in "output" mode? Ever read anything?
Try post #42. If you need help, send up a flare.
That’s because the word “neocon” is always used by anti-Semites to refer to people who want to help Israel.
I didn’t think you’d dare to show your handle around here after “L Ron” deciminated your candidate in the GOP primary last year. Now...Ron is on nearly every talk show. That must really burn you up.
Well, that’s ANOTHER definition. (post 42)
And no, I don’t “accept” their definition, if your reading skills weren’t deficient, you’d have understood that.
Baiting you? First off, I’d have to value your opinion to want to bait you. I don’t know you, so no, i don’t have any basis on which to value your opinion.
I don't think Irving Kristol, who continues to proudly call himself a neo-con. will appreciate your smear that he is an anti-semite.
You and Al Sharpton must be good pals. He screams racist to shut up anyone who disagrees with him and you scream anti-semite. Do you also call your wife an anti-semite when your coffee is cold?
ROFLMAO
Obviously, if people don't understand the terminology, they are going to be confused. If someone is confused, how are they ever going to learn to recognize the enemy?
We currently have a situation where good patriots are being fooled and they're going after straw men instead of learning anything.
Alternatively, we could all just continue to tear at each other, allowing the socialists to completely take control unimpeded.
Designer seems to be doing a lot of that on this thread -assuming nobody but he understands the term, and thinking there is one, solid definition used by all people.
RINOs and the K Street elite are not even on the same ship of state as are the various conservative groups.
Facing a choice between a liberal lite republican and a real deal, take no prisoners, far left liberal, guarantees a leftist victory virtually every time.
Although there are various Spectors - and it does Snowe in the GOP.
When the GOP itself stops bashing conservatives, - ala McCain, et. al, - it may start to win in the big arena again.
I don't need purity. - I'd settle for being on the same path at all.
I am sure the losing GOP candidate for Paul’s congressional seat in Texas apprecaites the fact that you laughed at his defeat. Is that how you treat all your friends when they suffer misfortune?
Enough with your holier-than-thou jerkiness, alright?
You didn’t read what I said. I’ll repeat it.
That’s because the word “neocon” is always used by anti-Semites to refer to people who want to help Israel.
Some folks here think definitions can change. How say you?
I’m not sure who he is, how he became my friend, or what he apprecaites.
I am sure many of your posts are filled with lies.
Maybe I should just help you with simple logic
Anti-Semites use the word “neocon” to refer to people who help Israel
That does NOT mean:
Everyone who uses the word “neocon” is an anti-Semite.
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