One of the most interesting results of Super Tuesday is that the anti-establishment candidate in the Republican race is soaring, Donald Trump, while the anti-establishment candidate on the Dem side is just sputtering along, Bernie Sanders. And while politics is a great mystery, one likely reason for Trump’s success is that he has taken on the establishment foreign policy in the Republican Party– neoconservatism, which gave us the Iraq war– while Sanders has largely laid off the establishment foreign policy in the Democratic Party, liberal interventionism, which also gave us the Iraq tragedy.
Trump’s critique has put him at war with the neoconservatives. Neoconservative godfather Bill Kristol is stunned that Trump may actually capture the support of Republican establishment figures. Lately he compared Trump to Hitler.
What’s depressing is how many conservatives are behaving like Austria.
Kristol used another Hitler metaphor, “appeasement,” in a piece bewailing Trump’s effect on the party:
it’s worth fighting to save a respectable political party, an admirable political movement, and a great country from a charlatan and a demagogue. There’s nothing inspiring about the appeasement of Donald Trump.
Some neocons are panicking or moving over to Hillary Clinton already. Kristol, of course, still holds out hope for Marco Rubio. As do many other neocons, Zaid Jilani reports at the Intercept:
In his quest to take up George W. Bush’s mantle, Rubio has arrayed a fleet of neoconservative funders, ranging from pro-Israel billionaire Paul Singer to Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer who funds Israeli settlements in the West Bank. His list of advisers is like a rolodex of Iraq War backers, ranging from Bush administration alumni Elliot Abrams and Stephen Hadley, to [Hillary Clinton supporter Robert] Kagan and serial war propagandist Bill Kristol.
But Rubio had a less-than-impressive night last night; and Scott McConnell at the American Conservative says that we may be witnessing an realignment, in which the neocons are purged from the Republican Party and they cross the aisle to the Dems in order to maintain their outsized influence.
The escalation of personal rhetoric has meant that there is now no chance that Rubio would be selected as Trump veep, which would be one way in which neoconservatives could enter the foreign-policy apparatus of the next administration. It has long been clear that Rubio represented the neoconservatives’ best chance for restoration: his campaign was overlaid with a kind of neocon signaling, from the core “New American Century” slogan (evocative of PNAC) to the prominence of certain advisors, to the hawkish positions on every conceivable foreign policy issue, to the the lockstep adherence to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s positions…
If… the neoconservatives continue their migration towards Hillary, the end result will a race in which the Republican candidate is running to the left of the Democratic candidate, at least in terms of the social base of his coalition and on foreign policy. This would amount to a major realignment in American politics, certainly one more dramatic than anything we’ve seen in the postwar era.
Some say that the Rubio-Trump war has destroyed the Republican Party. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Senator, announced that he will go for a third party candidate:
If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, my expectation is that I will look for some third candidate
The neoconservatives surely brought this destruction on the party by imposing a hawkish foreign policy on the Republican establishment. Kristol once bragged that he had purged the James Baker-Brent Scowcroft Realists from the party in the 1990s, but the lesson of Trump’s rise is that the Republican establishment then abandoned a truly conservative principle, don’t intervene; and GOP voters don’t like regime change. One response on twitter to Kristol:
Trump is karma coming back to kick neocons in the ass for the Iraq debacle
McConnell points out that the neoconservative rage at Chris Christie for backing Trump and thereby forgetting all his foreign policy coaching echoes the neocon exasperation at George W. Bush for forgetting some of his lines in his second term. “[T]he big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas,” his former speechwriter David Frum wrote.
Many on the right are jubilant over the neoconservative panic. At antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo declares that Trump has killed neoconservatism inside the Republican Party and some day he might even indict neocons for war crimes. Raimondo ascribes Trump’s rise to a thoughtful populist movement. Even the evangelical Christians who are supposed to love Israel are going for Trump because they don’t like regime change.
Both Rubio and Cruz are attacking Trump for his declaration that he would be “evenhanded” when it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The neoconservative orthodoxy that insists on unconditional support for Israeli actions, no matter how vicious and cruel — and in spite of how inimical it is to American interests – is being successfully challenged by Trump. What has everyone surprised is that evangelical voters, who were supposed to be in Cruz’s camp, have been won over by Trump – and this in spite of his supposedly “anti-Israel” stance…
What really horrifies them, however, is Trump’s sharp critique of the Iraq war, which he calls “a complete disaster,” and his condemnation of George W. Bush’s legacy. He dared not only to question the dogma that “Bush kept us safe,” but he also targeted the neocons who surrounded him:
“They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”
This is why the neocons are determined to destroy Trump. After all, if The Donald says he’s ready to prosecute Hillary over her emails, why wouldn’t he go after the neocons for lying us into war – for causing the death of many thousands under false pretenses? Trump can be vindictive – and this is one area where one can only hope that he lives up to his reputation.
Raimondo says that an Emergency Committee for Israel ad aimed at Trump because he loves dictators may only have driven voters to support Trump, because it reminds them that neoconservatives supported regime change in Iraq and in Syria and want another cold war with Russia. Here’s that ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73-xpW1tFV8
Again, the chief contrast here is to the Democratic side.
Bernie Sanders opposed Hillary Clinton’s Iraq war vote energetically, but he has never tried to animate the base by extending his critique by stating, she’s never seen a regime change she didn’t like. While Trump has directly taken on the neoconservative donor base of the Republican establishment and called out Sheldon Adelson, Sanders has never that I’m aware of called out Adelson’s billionaire Democratic double, Haim Saban, who has committed Hillary Clinton to support Israel. Sanders obviously feels safe slamming Clinton for her friendship with 70s bad-guy Henry Kissinger; but he has never gone after her friendship with the universally-despised Benjamin Netanyahu. That would be one way to try and rally African-American support, but Sanders hasn’t gone there yet. Maybe he will take some anti-establishment cues from Donald Trump.
Yes, I am also wondering about Bernie, does he want to win, or is this only a prearranged piece of theater? After the results of yesterday he either puts his candidacy into the second gear, or he will finish far behind as a second.
He is fighting great odds. Hillary is a well known political figure since 30 years, and to be honest, I have never heard of Sanders until last year or so. He is a political unknown. In addition Hillary has the support of money magnates with billions to spend, Bernie cannot match that, and always money decides who will win. He must imitate Trump, tell the voters what Hillary did during the past decades and warn them what can we expect from her. In other words, no more gentleman and satin gloves.
I remember what the democratic party was 60 years ago, when John Kennedy was getting ready for the presidency, and what it is today. According to Jill Steiner it became the property of big finance and war manufacturers, forgetting why it was grounded, to represent the working class, not the billionairs.
Hillary is a bought and paid for zionist property of big business, and should she reach the WH, we can be sure to have another war against “terror”, because it is a great business for the banks and weapons manufacturers.
The definition of a RINO is Bill Kristol. Look at the unending rage of Jennifer Rubin towards Chris Christie (“He’s RUINED now! RUINED I tell you!”).
Honestly, these people never cared for the Republican base or probably dont even have many Republican friends. They only joined the GOP because their primary loyalty is to Israel.
That’s what Buchanan said (correctly) and got run out of the party mainstream in the 90s – with the help of liberal Zionists in the media.
I’ve never cared for conservative social policies. I hate the reactionary stances of a Buchanan but if we are going to have a conservative opposition, at least let it be genuine. Let it be pro-America, in the sense that the people are primarily concerned with the welfare of the nation, not Israel. Let it be restrained, as genuine conservatism is and always will be.
Neocons were always agents of Israel. There was never anything conservative about endless military interventions. That’s just the reality, there’s zero point whatsoever to sugarcoat that issue.
You’d think from all the outrage in the media that they are half the party but this brouhaha exactly exposes their isolation. They are a small clique in the Beltway who have no connection to the GOP at all. They only exist in the media rags they’ve bought up like the Weekly Standard or in DC think tanks. That’s it.
Their #1 candidate wasn’t Rubio. It was actually Graham. Rubio is a weak-sauce Lindsay Graham. Now he got butchered on Super Tuesday.
Honestly, I can’t wait to see them being run out of the GOP. Remember, they would be demanding loyalty to the party if they were in control. Now they are asking for a debate. The assholes know the other side is far too gentle to be as ruthless as you should be with these vermin.
Phil likes to stretch things a bit. Kristol made no comparison of Trump and Hitler. I think Phil just wishes he did. Netanyahu universally despised? Another Phil Weiss dream. Keep on dreaming!
Another article, after a whole pile of others before it, being pumped out by Phil in Trump’s favor. Whitewashing his rhetorics, sanitizing his campaign, and legitimizing his methods towards presidency. I sense it won’t be long before Phil finally drops his progressive leftist facade, throw his brown allies under the bus and embracing his true nature as a Trump supporter.
BTW, the neocon fallback plan to the democratic party is finished. Clinton is a tool of theirs, but she’s last on deck standing. Cory Booker was supposed to be their puppet but look at how he thumbed his nose at them during the Iran deal.
Look where the liberal progressive base is. They HATE Israel.
This is what makes me grin. These assholes have no way to turn over the long run. And it won’t be the GOP base which will deliver the final blow. The last knife in will be plunged by the liberal student base. These people have been educated on I/P. Many of them are students of color, like Mr. Bailey who was profiled on this site a few days ago.
They’ve seen the real Israel. And unlike whimpy WASPs, they can’t be bullied into silence.