That's the hallmark of a neocon (social-liberal, economic-conservative Republican) shunning the social conservatives, which is shorthand for the South.
The Clintonistas have been waving bloody shirts and Confederate flags for 20+ years now, in their long war to "break the box", i.e. split moderate-conservative and "Reagan Democrat" conservatives off from Southern social conservatives, by painting the latter as oooga-booga Kluxers with pickup trucks stacked with Negro corpses, headed off to the latest cross-burning party.
You can see the "dozens" the neocons have been calling on Southern conservative Republicans by going back and metasearching on anything by Christopher Caldwell. He wrote a long article in a 1996 Atlantic Monthly which he followed up with other articles and speeches, some of which are archived online, until at least 2001 -- five years.
The crux of his argument is to accept the premise that Southerners have no merit and no equity in freedom, that they deserve to be ruled by their moral betters (hint: this is vanguardism, the liberal conceit that others who don't agree with us, either don't know enough, or they're mismotivated or openly malicious, and in either case forfeit their equity in freedom and political self-determination, and become our fair and lawful prey as we hatch our political cabals and plots), and that no self-respecting Midwesterner should want to be caught dead in their company or on the same side of a social issue with them.
This is the box-breaking Clintonista wedge meme these last 20 years. Neocons, being social liberals, are particularly hospitable to that message, and Zito shows all the necessary evidence in her remarks to justify drawing the conclusion I did about her politics.
IMHO. you're jumping to conclusions.