The main players were Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and a few others, with Bill Kristol over at the Weekly Standard acting as their cheerleader.
Dubya, other than the Neocons, had plenty of other former Nixonians and Bushy people from Poppy's administration around him who were not Neocons -- Karl Rove, Mary Matalin and other political people, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, and his own "economics/finance" people who conspicuously didn't include his father's top men like Nick Brady and James A. Baker III.
Since the Eisenhower Administration, the Wall Street Wing of the GOP has been loaded with "Me-Too'ers" (presidential-candidate examples: Ike himself, Wendell Willkie, Tom Dewey, Harold Stassen, Nelson Rockefeller, Dick Nixon), and the press has played a game with the GOP, blessing "Me-Too'ers" while decrying Main Street Republicans like Bob Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Sarah Palin as ignorant little trolls with tiny minds and scabby knuckles (from dragging on the ground).
Nixon did us all a favor by finally going to war with the media people, inviting them to take their gloves off and show us what was under them the whole time: brass knuckles, painted Red.
But I'm still wondering if and how the "neo-con" thing influenced the massive growth in government W was so in love with.