Your assessment is correct. I first heard the term “Neocon” in the late ‘70’s. It was applied to a group of largely Leftist Jewish intellectuals (Irving Kristol, Nathan Podhoretz, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Richard Perle, but also included Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Daniel P. Moynihan, et al.) who had begun to reject the ways of Marxism, seeing a strong America as a source for international good. They advocated American power projection and a vigorous defense of Israel.
For the most part, Moynihan being an exception, they didn’t give a rat’s about domestic policy. They are all Big Government types - no friends of Liberty!
You left Bill Bennett off your list.
Good post. These people were the old ‘Scoop Jackson’ wing of the Democratic Party. They were very unhappy with both McGovern and Carter. They believed in a hard line foreign policy but were basically LBJ liberals on domestic policy. They refused to support Carter for reelection and instead supported Reagan largely for foreign policy. The bad part of that is that they brought their liberal domestic views with them and began pulling the conservative movement left.