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The neocon moment is over
Paul Mulshine
New
Jersey Star Ledger
Wednesday May 23, 2007
So-called "neo" conservatism has its roots in a Marxist
view of the world. So it is not surprising that the neocons are
trying to silence their most prominent conservative critic.
That would be Texas Rep. Ron Paul. He outraged the neocons dur
ing the Republican presidential debate last week by advocating that
the GOP return to the traditional conservative stance of noninterventionism.
Paul invoked the ghost of Robert Taft, the GOP Senate leader who
fought entry into NATO. And he also pointed out that messing around
in the Mideast creates risks here at home.
That prompted Rudy Giuliani to interrupt Paul and demand that he retract
his remarks. Paul not only refused to bow to Il Duce, but after the
debate, Paul told the TV audience that the self-appointed saint of
9/11 might consider reading the report of the 9/11 commission, which
makes the same point in some detail.
The following day, I wrote a column taking Paul's side in the debate.
I expected the usual response from brainwashed Bush loyalists who
believe the Iraq war is going so well that attacks on Iran and Syria
are long overdue.
That didn't happen. Instead I was deluged with e-mails agreeing
with Paul's position.
Something was up. I put in a call to Andy Napolitano, the Fox News
legal analyst and my brother's old buddy at Notre Dame Law School.
In addition to appearing on TV, Andy co-hosts a talk show called
"Brian and the Judge" on Fox radio.
"Our calls have been going 10 to one in favor of Ron Paul,"
said Na politano, a former Superior Court judge in New Jersey who
supports Paul's libertarian views.
I got a similar response from Lew Rockwell, who hosts a Web site
(www.lewrockwell.com) fre quented by free-market fanatics. He attributed
the outpouring of pro-Paul sentiment to the fact that "the
people who are against the war were waiting for someone who wasn't
Michael Moore."
That seems to be the case. Even on the Town Hall Web site, a sort
of ongoing acid test for drinkers of neocon Kool-Aid, a blog showed
overwhelming agreement with Paul, who is a physician in real life.
Clearly, the doctor had hit a nerve. The neocons are fond of ar
guing that we can't simply retreat into "fortress America,"
as they call it. But the impulse to do so is deeply ingrained in
the American psyche. If you doubt that, look at the polls on immigration.
The neocon in chief is an open-borders guy, but that view has no
support in the base of the GOP.
Giuliani is well to the left of Bush on immigration. As New York
City mayor, he ordered his police not to turn illegal aliens over
to the feds. If the plotters in the 9/11 at tack had been caught
on immigra tion violations by the New York Police Department on
9/10, Giuliani would have had them released in time to make their
planes. No wonder he believes we have to fight the terrorists over
there.
As it now stands, all of the leading GOP contenders endorse some
version of the neocon view of the world. They agree that it is the
proper duty of the president to administer not just the United States
but the Persian Gulf states. But the current Republican president
has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that this idea is unworkable.
No wonder the party politburo doesn't want Paul in the debates.
Out in the heartland, however, isolationism is the default setting.
The American people supported the Iraq war only because the neocons
convinced them that Saddam Hussein was a threat to America. When
that fib fell apart, Americans were supposed to be ecstatic that
Iraqis were finally going to the polls -- while ignoring the fact
that the parties they were voting for had longer histories of anti-American
terrorism than Saddam.
In other words, these foreigners are nuts. Paul made that point
more politely last week in endorsing Ronald Reagan's decision to
pull out of Lebanon in 1983 after the bombing of the Marine barracks.
"I think Reagan was right," he said. "We don't understand
the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics."
As for Giuliani, he doesn't even understand American politics.
He mistakenly believes his views on Mideast interventionism are
conservative, but he ignores the fact that his views are indistinguishable
from those of Hillary Clinton.
That will change, though not on Giuliani's side. He's too busy
looking for his personal Abyssinia to in vade. But Hillary comes
from the heartland, not New York. She is smart enough to recognize
the seismic shift in American politics that occurred last week.
Any day now I expect her to begin wistfully recalling how she organized
her kindergarten class to support Robert Taft in the 1952 presidential
race.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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