Dubya and Neo Cons in hot water with old GOP guard

[Pallas180]

From Salon

http://archive.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/08/30/neocon_fight/index_np.html


Neocon vs. neocon
It's every ideologue for himself as even the most hardcore Republicans try to distance themselves from the disaster in Iraq.

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By Martin Sieff



Aug. 30, 2004 | The Grand Old Party's "big tent" on foreign policy is flapping in tatters. Behind the Republicans' predictable show of Rambo bravado as they gather in Madison Square Garden Monday, they are reeling. The libertarians and isolationists have left in disgust. The respectable traditional internationalists of the James Baker-Brent Scowcroft school are holding their noses and saying nothing, but behind closed doors they are seething. President Bush and his fundamentalist evangelicals have left only the neoconservatives who plunged them into the nightmarish swamps of Iraq. And now even that notoriously disciplined group has gone rogue and is rioting wildly: The neocons have turned upon one another -- and on Bush himself.

The neoconservatives who dominate the civilian echelon in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council understandably remain silent. With their every prediction and assurance about Iraq discredited, there is little more they can do but hope for another war, this time with Iran, that will miraculously sweep away all their problems. It is like betting the second mortgage on red when you have already lost your shirt and the roulette wheel is rigged to turn up black.

[Inland]

1. Neocons and evangelical millenialists have taken over

my dad's republican party, the party that used to include small town business owners and good government types. And all the seething behind closed doors is exactly that--the scowcrofts, Bush I, Dole, and Lugar types have all made their deal with the devil.

[theshadow]

2. It's happening around here.

This is a mostly Republican town, and I have many friends who are active in the GOP. They feel crowded out by the neo-cons. Moderate Republicans are branded as RINO's or (gasp) "liberals". I know one woman who has been a GOP activist for 50 years who will probably vote for Sen. Feingold and can't stand Bush; whether she'll vote for Kerry is another matter but all of this would have been unheard of four years ago. She speaks with pride about how she always could talk and work with a woman who was just as active in the Democratic party here on matters that cut across party lines; she lamented that the current movers-and-shakers in the local GOP reject such contact completely.

[TA]

3. The neocons and their imperialistic plans have destroyed

the Republican Party. It will be a long time before the Republicans can regroup and become a force again.