Project for the Next American Catastrophe

by Eric Martin

In a recent post discussing a conservative post-mortem/where-do-we-go-from-here roundtable, Brad Reed at Sadly, No! had this to say about his own wish list for the reconfigured GOP:

If I could pick one faction of the GOP to be forever purged from public life, it would have to be the neocons. As much as the Christian Right and the anti-tax wingnuts bug me, neither of them is as heinous as people whose sole political ambition is to start unjustified wars.

I agree entirely, but one should not confuse such desires with reality.  I’m not accusing Brad of such delusional optimism, but rather Timothy Burke in the post that Hilzoy linked to over the weekend.  Said Burke:

[T]here’s little need to take the really bad-faith conservatives seriously now. For the last eight years, we’ve had to take them somewhat seriously because they had access to political power…You had to listen to and reply to even the most laughably incoherent, goalpost-moving, anti-reality-based neoconservative writer talking about Iraq or terrorism because there was an even-money chance that you were hearing actual sentiments going back and forth between Dick Cheney’s office and the Pentagon. […]

But I think we can all make things just ever so slightly better, make the air less poisonous, by pushing to the margins of our consciousness the crazy, bad, gutter-dwelling, two-faced, tendentious high-school debator kinds of voices out there in the public sphere, including and especially in blogs. Let them stew in their own juices, without the dignity of a reply, now that their pipelines to people with real political power have been significantly cut."

But this is, sadly, a short-sighted view of political cycles and movements.  Neoconservative thought is not dead – nor its political viability extinguished – simply because Cheney will be out of office come January.  After all, neoconservatives were forced to deal with a hostile Vice President during the Clinton years, and yet neoconservatives were not stewing in their own juices as much as concocting a recipe, agenda and strategy for the ensuing decade (even if 8 years of Bush fell somewhat short of the hoped for "New American Century"). 

While neoconservatism will inevitably, and out of necessity, take on a different posture during the Obama years, progressives must not confuse hibernation for death.  Already, the old fortresses are being refitted, as William Kristol alludes to in an interview with Hugh Hewitt:

HH: And I think he will be very concerned with the two issues I’m going to raise with you – national security and immigration. Now I believe the Committee On the Present Danger filled a need in the 70s which we need to reorganize an equivalent now. But what do you think, Bill Kristol?

BK: Oh, I agree, and we did a little of that in the 90s with the Project For the New American Century. And I actually think there are people talking about this. And there’s a lot of good foreign policy and defense thinking on our side, the Fred Kagans and Bob Kagans and Reuel Gerechts of the world, Victor Davis Hanson, et cetera. But a little bit of a political organization for them wouldn’t be bad. And I think we should support Obama, incidentally, if he does the right thing. [emphasis added]

Right on schedule, Mordor is stirring.  The ring website has awoken in response to it’s master’s call:

Since May, visitors to PNAC’s website were informed that “this account has been suspended,” but now the website is back up, though it does not seem to have been updated with any new material.

Further, what does it mean to say, as Burke does, that "pipelines to people with real political power have been significantly cut" for neoconservatives?  Neoconservatives comprised the upper echelons of the team advising the GOP’s presidential nominee. While McCain didn’t win, it’s not as if the Scowcroft wing has emerged victorious as the new foreign policy gurus of the Republican Party.  Quite the contrary: the Hagels, Powells, Zakarias, Fukuyamas and other alienated right-leaning foreign policy thinkers have gravitated toward the Democratic Party, rather than mount an intra-party power grab. 

While the New York Sun recently went kaput (good riddance), neocons still control – or dominate – two large think tanks (the AEI and Hoover Institution), and have access to, or control of, multiple media venues (Murdoch’s vast media empire – including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Kristol’s spot at the NY Times, Krauthammer and the Editorial Board at the WaPo, etc.).  In many ways, neocons have a larger support network now than they did in the 1990s – a period during which they were able to lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq, as well as greatly influence a shift toward a more belligerent posture vis-a-vis the Israeli peace process.  Not bad for a group then-lacking a "pipeline to real political power."

So while Burke argues that we can and should ignore neoconservatives, I would counsel exactly the opposite: we must redouble our efforts to discredit them now and ensure that they remain in a state of disrepute in perpetuity.  This vigilance is especially warranted given that it is unlikely that the Republican Party will undergo a massive transformation whereby its more sane voices will ascend to leadership roles – as much as we might hope. 

Rather, there will likely be some superficial changes, some re-branding, a little policy tinkering around the edges and a call for patience and resolve.  Absent a real shift, the best chance for an unrepentant Republican Party to return to power will come after Democratic misrule or if and when the American public gives in to the self-indulgence of political apathy, amnesia or, worse still, euphoric recall – fueled by a certain level of comfort secured by a period of sane, Democratic rule (as such attitudes were prevalent during the 2000 election).  In many ways, this is a safe bet placed on the nature of humans to take good fortune for granted, and other traits that favor political pendulums.

To avoid a premature or unwarranted swing to the GOP – or at least toward a GOP that still prominently features neoconservative foreign policy and other destructive philosophies – I would argue pace Burke and, to some extent, Hilzoy, that we must continue to engage the "anti-reality-based neoconservatives" and other extremists that comprise the GOP coalition.  Unfortunately, progressives don’t get to decide which voices are loudest and most respected in the GOP firmament.  Rather, we must deal with the standard bearers that the GOP faithful elevate – be it Sarah Palin (who many, in a similar vein, suggested should have been ignored by Obama-supporters during the campaign itself) or Arnold Schwarzenegger, Randy Scheunemann or Ross Douthat.

This is not to say that Hilzoy’s larger point is without merit (hers* never are).  There are, in fact, certain fringe voices that we can and should ignore because they are, well, fringe.  But that should be the test, not the quality of the argument itself. Hilzoy nibbled at the fringe test by stating that she would eventually contend with arguments that "seem to be gaining broader currency."  But I would argue that we should not only rise to respond to arguments that gain "broader currency," but to most arguments (even the ostensibly risible ones) from those GOP voices that maintain a significant audience.  Much to my consternation, the National Review is not a fringe periodical, despite the fact that many of its contributors put forth work that is "laughably incoherent."  Neoconservative arguments should not be allowed to pass without spirited pushback simply because those arguments show no discernible relatiobship with reality.

Coherence?  Empirical grounding?  Those are not criteria deemed overly important by the modern Republican Party, and so they should not be the filters used to determine which of the Republican Party’s arguments to take on.  You debate the political opposition you have, not the political opposition you wish you had.

(* embarrassing grammatical error fixed)