But, to repeat the questions I asked the original poster, do most conservatives really want to abolish all of what remains of the New Deal? Do we really think this possible? Do people expect that such a program will ever come close to winning the acceptance of a majority? When we seriously consider the question, do we think getting rid of Social Security or collective bargaining or Nixon's EPA or TR's FDA or Grant's National Park Service will make America better or stronger or our lives better and more secure? We all have differences with how such agencies operate and we all know agencies and programs that should be done away with, but has anyone shown that the country would be better off with out Social Security or the EPA or federal pharmaceutical testing?
Most GOP voters of past decades had lived through the Depression and weren't apt to support an across the board rollback of government programs to what existed in 1964, 1933 or 1913 or 1860 or 1787. Now we're more able to contemplate such a rollback as an ideal, but are we really willing to accept all the consequences, and if we are, are the rest of the American people?
I would think a lot of the talk here about neo-cons as Trotskyites, misses the point. The neo-cons -- those who don't relapse and rejoin the Democrats -- moved to the right from the 60s to the 90s. The younger generation, whatever their faults, never were leftists and never had the enthusiasm for social democracy, the Great Society or the 60s that their parents may have had 40 years ago. On the other hand, since GWB came on the scene, neo-cons do appear to have a renewed enthusiasm for big government programs, and they do seem to be sliding back to the left. Meanwhile conservatives have learned after Reagan and Gingrich that there isn't going to be any full-scale return to Eisenhower or Coolidge, and some question whether such a rollback would be all to the good or that it wouldn't be accompanied with the same complaints we have against the present order.
There's still a difference between neo-cons and others, but I don't think it revolves around a rollback of government programs, but on the "rollforward" of government power associated with the war. One reason for continuing suspicion of the neo-cons is their enthusiasm for war. One might have prefered the neo-cons to mainstream Republicans in the 70s and 80s because they were more solidly anti-Communist than Nixon or Ford or Dole or Kissinger. But today, when the wars in question are different, there's more reason to distrust the neo-conservatives.
I think the distinction is not enthusiasm for war but with whom. The paleo-cons have always had a deep and abiding distrust for the state of Israel. They view any war in the Middle East through that lens. They see such conflicts in terms of Israel and the "Jewish lobby" as being not in our interests but in the interests of Israel. The Neo-Con "clique" is the mirror image of the Paleo-cons. It is not surprising that, over-time, the far-left and the far-right have finally reached the same point in their views of Israel and that conservatives have been fairly consistent in their views of our relationship with Israel and our strategic national interests in the region. The extremes of both the left and the right view the Middle East "problem" as Israel and the Palestinians. Conservatives view the Middle East as the entire region and its impact on the interests of the United States.
Neo-cons were, as you say, real anti-communists when the Evil Empire was all we worried about. I'm not sure if they advocated pre-emptive strikes against potential enemies, though Buckley and Steve Allen -- no conservative of any stripe -- proposed such against Red China's nuclear facilities as I recall.
And since the Cold War ended, the neo-cons have been staying up late trying to think of new enemies that would justify another great military build-up. David Brooks and Bill Kristol whacked a hornet's nest with their "national greatness" escapade, and at exactly the wrong time with Clinton in the White House and few conservatives wanting to see him with the power to ruin even more lives worldwide.
But since 9/11 I'm not sure that the neo-conservatives haven't been overtaken in their bloodlust by what we used to think of as "traditional" conservatives, in the mold of Barry Goldwater and Carl Curtis and John Tower. By the numbers, there have to be more traditionalists than neos, wouldn't you say?
Yet the neo-cons are seen everywhere on the TV as commentators, anchors and "specialists." Their influence surely extends through the administration as well as the media. About the only place they don't have a foothold is in academia, it would seem (unless Hillsdale College counts).