Not Dead Yet

According to American Conservative Magazine, it appears I spoke a little too soon in my tentative praise for George W Bush for helping to usher in the death of the neo-conservative movement.

Sadly, I have to agree with Scott McConnell of AmConMag:

This election season ends with neoconservatism widely mocked and openly contemptuous of the president who took its counsels. The key policy it has lobbied for since the mid-1990s—the invasion of Iraq—is an almost universally acknowledged disaster. So one can see why the movement’s obituaries are being written. But the group was powerful and influential well before its alliance with George W. Bush. In its wake it leaves behind crises—Iraq first among them—that will not be easy to resolve, and neocons will not be shy about criticizing whatever imperfect solutions are found to the mess they have created. Perhaps most importantly, neoconservatism still commands more salaries—able people who can pursue ideological politics as fulltime work in think tanks and periodicals—than any of its rivals. The millionaires who fund AEI and the New York Sun will not abandon neoconservatism because Iraq didn’t work out. The reports of the movement’s demise are thus very much exaggerated.

McConnell is correct in positing that neo-conservatives have many more lives to burn through, before their (ironically) near-sighted ideology has run its course. They are masters at denying culpability -- too eager to align themselves with any next power base that can (or will) further their cause. McConnell rightfully points out their history in latching onto either Party -- Democratic or Republican -- in order too further the implementation of their worldview. Indeed, their history proves it, despite that it may not always have been a cakewalk:

Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson was the archetype, a "labor" Cold War Democrat and the man who originally brought Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz to Capitol Hill. A force in the Senate, Jackson could delay or even thwart policies he opposed, and he (and aide Richard Perle) did a brilliant job of tying Henry Kissinger’s détente policy in knots in the mid-1970s. But that was the power to negate, not create. Jackson induced sleep on the stump, as his two presidential bids revealed. Replacing him as the great hope for the neocons was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York-born Harvard professor who was, in the 1960s and ‘70s, a flamboyant and often brilliant intellectual. But once elected to the Senate in 1976, Moynihan proved a disappointment, turning out to be not remotely as hawkish as neoconservatives expected.

For the older neocons, with backgrounds as Democrats and even socialists, embracing the Republican Party always seemed a date on the wild side. But not so for those now under 60, who came of political age under Reagan. Republican ties were natural. And as the experience with the Clinton transition demonstrated, crossing the floor to the Democrats will not be easy.

But if Bush has failed them, what options remain? Joe Lieberman has less national appeal than Henry Jackson did, and once you have been embedded in the Pentagon and the vice president’s office, forays from the Senate will seem a weak brew. John McCain is another matter, and if Americans can be persuaded that the solution to their Middle East, terrorism, and other diplomatic dilemmas lies in more troops and invasions, neoconservatism will have springtime all over again.

What's most ironic about this chameleon-like political agility and Party-hopping is that for all of their self-proclaimed moral clarity and 'noble' long-term vision of an American-style global peace, the practical application of their approach means more day-to-day emphasis on political self-preservation than on long-term planning to achieve their lofty goals. Hence the failed war in Iraq, back-stabbing, and relentless continuation of smearing political opponents.

This last point -- that neocons are adept masters at the all-too-effective political smear machine -- is also partly why their alliance with Bush/Rove made so much sense to their political opposition despite the historical, perceived political differences noted above:

What won’t be dropped is the neoconservatives' attachment to Israel and the tendency to conflate the Jewish state’s interests (as defined in right-wing Israeli terms) with America’s. So one can look forward to neoconservative agitation on two fronts: a powerful campaign to draw the United States into a war to eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential and an equally loud effort in support of maintaining Israeli dominance over the West Bank and denying the Palestinians meaningful statehood. Those who argue effectively for a more even-handed American policy towards Israel and Palestine will risk the full measure of smears linking them to historical anti-Semitism.

Example? Look no further than last week.

Could someone please find a way to permanently kill these things?