You are overthinking this. It’s really much more simple. Neo-conservative is simply a perjorative term invented to tar anyone strong on national defense. The only other common use of the term neo in American politics previously was neo-Nazis. The use of the term is intended to link people like Cheney and Bolton with Nazis in people’s minds. They are also doing the same with the term “climate change deniers”. Obviously one cannot “deny” a prediction about the future, even if it were completely accurate. To accuse someone of denying future events is absurd on the face of it. However the left knows the only other common use of the term “denier” is “Holocaust deniers” who just happen to usually be, yep, neo-Nazis.
No, that’s not right. Irving Kristol, Bill’s father, used the term “neo-conservative” to describe himself in the late 70’s. It only became a pejorative term after the disastrous George W Bush presidency.
Think about it: Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond were as strong on defense as anyone and no one thought to call them “neo-conservatives”. Why? Because there was nothing neo (new) about their conservativism; they were always conservatives.
Irving Kristol, Scoop Jackson, and the rest of the former liberals in the 70’s embraced the neo-conservative label because they didn’t want to be associated with regular old conservatives, whom they saw as rubes. They were liberals at heart, just liberals with an appreciation for a strong national defense.