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--
>....maybe you’re spelling it wrong in your search field. Or not actually looking at all.
What a snotty response.
There are multiple answers, most of them wildly different and exclusive of each other.
Is that enough clarity for you?
Thanks neocon movement for making even communism sound preferable to what you scum bags are, which is just stupid. Hope you are happy with the Marxist States of America because you created them.
Maybe the lady in post 70 can help us...
> Course, it’s always difficult to determine which country Bill Kristol is defending, and what motivation drives his elliptical thinking, and convoluted thoughts.
Heh. Over time, I came to that same conclusion - like: “Who the heck is this guy, anyway?”
This article contains weasel words, vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. Such statements should be clarified or removed. (March 2009)
That's exactly the point I was going to make. When I lurk on a liberal site, they are scads of posts about neocons and Zionists. Despite the definitions I've seen, neocon seems to be little more than a code word for Jooos. Reasonable conservatives might disagree, but in popular usage, it's just an anti-semitic slur.
Well, if FReepers don't know by now about these blood sucking, traitorous, COWARDLY 'neocons' by now -- and how they lied to Dubya ('Axis of Evil', Frum), conspired to con Rummy (no pun) on going to war (Richard Perle), forged documents (Doug Feith) and gave them to Condi when she was NSA to back up their war meme -- I give up.
Neocons are self serving scum. They should be shunned like lepers and told to go back to the democratic party, whence they came. A Neocon's loyalty is only to themselves and their bank account.
And NOW the Neo's are on the Open Border, 'cheap labor', Bandwagon (Billy Kristol). All while AMERICANS are losing jobs and their homes
Neocons are utterly despicable.
And Richard Perle and Doug Feith should be sitting in a Prison Cell!
Playing “Spot the Joooooo” is as old as the hills.
See my post #67.
Nope. It was congress. They forced FANNI MAE AND FREDDI MAC to loan money to people who couldn't repay it. It was the artificial demand from all these congressionaly subsidized dead beats that caused the housing bubble and it's subsequent collapse.
fANNIE MAE AND FREDDI MAC were government subsidized agencies. Can you blame banks and insurance companies for thinking that Congress would not allow them to default? Yet that is exactly what Congress did. Congress should have bailed out FANNIE MAE AND FREDDI MAC instead of the banks. If they had the banks wouldn't have needed to be bailed out.
You need to realize that this depression is not a failure of capitalism. It is caused by socialism. It is the height of hypocrisy for congress to be blaming banks when this is all their doing. Specifically Barney Frank and his buddies.
Yeah, that’s as brilliant as telling someone to run to the dictionary for the proper definition of the word “run”. There’s more than 1 definition, depending on the desired effect.
I see you still haven't read my #42.
Now please don't mistake my casual insults for mere gramatical mistakes.
You are willfully ignorant, and by gosh, you'll STAY that way if you have anything to say about it!
Better yet; DON'T read anything, you might accidentally learn something (gasp!)
Hey! Good observation! And it was probably the other way around; Rumsfield was in lockstep with the neocons.
Maybe somebody is starting to "get it" after all.
Oh, sure, accept a definition from your liberal friends, THEY sure know which end of the stick is dirty! OR NOT!
"HELP! I'm sooooo confused!"
Are you baiting me?
Pls rd 42.
When I see the word “neocon”, I always see it as a codeword used by kooks to really mean “Jew”.
Only when we allow it. My dictionary does not "change" while resting on the shelf. My name does not change over time.
"..regarding a term that was coined more than thirty five years ago."
Taking that "logic" to its natural conclusion, our Constitution is hopelessly out of date, and the meaning of it has utterly changed, so we might as well ignore it completely .
You and the socialists have a lot in common. Did you get that job that you applied for in the Obommer administration?
I gave "my" definition, now will you do likewise, and post "your" definition of neocon for us?
Apparently you are operating under the mistaken believe that I do not understand the meaning, thus your asinine post to me. No,it is because I understand it that the article makes no sense. The term was applied wrongly to several people in several cases....which is why so many people are “confused” or have taken issue with it.
Given that you could not understand that simple context I think it would be a good idea to cease your self appointed “education” vendetta and stick further explanations up your ass. Removing them can be YOUR “homework”.
Think of it as “homework” and your grade in freedom hinges on whether you can understand who is our enemy, and who is our friend.
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