The Patriot Post® · Neocons and Newcomers — Will History Repeat Itself?

Is the Right at risk of becoming a movement dominated by 1990s liberals? The recent endorsements of Donald Trump by Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is just another example of Democrats of the “old stock” coming out in support of the Republican Party’s candidate for president. Now, some of the most beloved figures by the mainstream Right are liberals like Bill Maher, Bari Weiss, and Tulsi Gabbard.

When explaining their transition, liberals who now ally with conservatives on issues like DEI and so-called “gender-affirming care” almost invariably say, à la Ronald Reagan, that they “didn’t leave the Left, the Left left them.” It’s the 21st-century version of Irving Kristol’s maxim, “A neoconservative is a liberal mugged by reality.” Besides having a similar and clever rejoinder to use when people ask why you align with the Right, the current movement of lifetime liberals to the Republican Party could share the same consequences that the movement of anti-communist liberals, or neoconservatives, to the Right did in the previous century.

When the neoconservatives emerged as the dominating force on the Right, they did so while still maintaining liberal views on a few topics. On immigration, neoconservatives typically advocated liberalizing immigration law. On the welfare state, neoconservatives made peace with the New Deal, seeking only to limit the growth of future welfare programs, not privatize or abolish old ones. And on foreign policy, neoconservatives discarded the conservative notions of prudence and restraint, replacing them with an interventionism so utopian that only a liberal could have come up with it.

But while they brought liberal views over with them, the emergence of the neoconservatives greatly benefited the intellectual strength of the conservative movement as a whole. Not only did they foster debate between social traditionalists of the Kirkean mold and libertarians influenced by Hayek, they also channeled their intellectual prowess in policy analysis, which built the statistical foundation upon which much of the Right bases its arguments on domestic issues.

The neoconservative project was not doomed to go wrong. Magazines like The Public Interest, with contributors that included former members of the Johnson administration, gave the Right added credibility through their meticulous analysis and liberal bona fides. This helped compensate for the more limited reach of more solidly Right publications like National Review, whose contributors — such as James Kilpatrick, Ernest Van Den Haag, and James Burnham — could be off-putting to the average reader.

Unfortunately, however, the neoconservative movement sought not just influence over the Right but complete domination of it. As Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol were replaced by their sons, John Podhoretz and Bill Kristol, intellectually rigorous figures like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and James Q. Wilson passed away without any comparable successors. While the first generation of neoconservatives retired, the geopolitical and economic landscape shifted away from anti-communism, as did the needs of the American people. However, instead of adapting to these changes or engaging in the same vigorous debate their predecessors did, the new neoconservative leadership clung rigidly to their outdated views, working to marginalize and exclude any dissenting voices within the conservative movement.

Perhaps the best example of the abuse of neoconservative power was a National Review cover story written by David Frum that excoriated opponents of the Iraq War as unpatriotic and attempted to associate them with anti-Semitism. This story put National Review at odds with many of those who had worked tirelessly alongside William F. Buckley to build meaningful opposition to the liberal status quo just a few decades before. For example, Taki Theodoracopulos, Robert Novak, Patrick Buchanan, and Scott McConnell were among those whom Frum called on conservatives to “turn [their] back on.” Ironically, Bill Buckley ended up walking back his support of the war, writing a column that he delivered to Neal B. Freeman, one of his colleagues who was against the war during its inception, with the note “‘This one’s for you, pal.’”

Flash forward to the 2020s, and criticisms of the neoconservatism embodied by Bill Kristol are now commonplace in the most visible of public places, like on Tucker Carlson’s independent podcast, Matt Walsh’s Daily Wire show, or Laura Ingraham’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News. The readership of mainstream conservative publications decreases, while that of grassroots and independent ones, like The Patriot Post, rises.

The fall from grace of the neoconservatives is truly a spectacular one to behold, and with it comes many lessons.

As disaffected liberals continue to gain acceptance among the mainstream Right, conservatives should brace themselves for the same old liberal baggage that will inevitably be dragged in. Sure, folks like Weiss and Maher are useful in calling out the craziness of the Progressive Left, but let’s not pretend they hold in esteem traditional conservative values and norms. Their takes on criminal justice, foreign policy, culture, and American identity? It’s liberalism in a new wrapper, and if we are not careful, the movement of Goldwater and Buckley will continue to become a watered-down version of itself — becoming nothing more than a refuge for liberals with buyer’s remorse.

Last time, neoconservatives didn’t just influence the Right — they tried to own it, banishing anyone who challenged their long-held liberal sensibilities. This domination spoiled the esteemed reputation of neoconservatives by crystalizing them into a rigid, dogmatic faction that redefined what conservatism was. Who knows? Maybe RFK Jr. will convince Trump that the Green New Deal is a conservative policy. Already, I suspect it was Gabbard who influenced Trump into coming out for mandating insurance coverage of in-vitro fertilization treatments, so who is to say what’s to come next?

When Social Security collapses — and it will — we should not defer to Gabbard’s economic advice when formulating a replacement but rather rely on the wisdom of Milton Friedman. And when the time comes to implement a sensible immigration policy, we should not accept the advice of Bari Weiss, who “sobbed at her desk in horror over Mr. Trump’s victory,” but rather defer to Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies.

So, as this new wave of old-school liberals rolls in, we should think twice before rolling out the red carpet for them. If we do, conservatives might just hear a 2025 version of David Frum telling them to “turn their backs” on anyone who doesn’t embrace their orthodoxies. But this time, it won’t be over the Iraq War. It’ll be over standing firm on the very principles that made conservatism — and the Great American Nation — worth defending in the first place.