Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I really like palaeocons, because they loathe neocons so much. It's my version of lesser-evillism, I guess.

There's a wonderfully droll piece in The American Conservative:

Neoconned Again
Discredited under Bush, the superhawks reunite for Obama.

After successive elections unseated the Republican majority and sent John McCain to defeat, neoconservatism seemed like a spent force....

One would expect neoconservatives to be friendless and circumspect, grumbling about Obama’s inevitable failure as they slump away from Washington. Instead, they are jubilant, palling around with liberals again, enjoying renewed respect. Obama is their hero.

On March 31, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Dan Senor launched the Foreign Policy Initiative, the latest neoconservative think tank. Its first conference, dedicated to “Planning for Success” in Afghanistan, had the spirit of a family reunion. Sounds of backslapping and gossip filled the hall at the Mayflower Hotel....

Nearly every attendee, it seemed, was president of another grandly named neoconservative outfit. In one corner was Clifford May, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. In another stood John Nagl, who leads the Center for a New American Security. Near him, Randy Scheunemann, the disgraced lobbyist and—bear with me—former president of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a program of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)....

The first order of business at FPI was a stern warning against “isolationists.” An article, “Yes, We Can,” by Max Boot, Frederick Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan was distributed to the crowd.... A panel comprised of Nagl, Robert Kagan, and the Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor, Jackson Diehl, focused on defending the foreign-policy consensus that has been developing since Obama announced his decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan....

Kagan warned that “opportunistic” Republicans might attack the administration’s escalation of the Long War. Gushing over the new president’s strategy, he exclaimed, “Obama made a gutsy and courageous decision.…"

.... Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, outdid his older brother Robert in lauding the commander in chief: “I fully support the president’s policy as stated—and I will work as hard to make this president’s policies a success...."

Republican Congressman John McHugh provided a model of bipartisan obedience to the president—“I can only say to the president, ‘Sounds good to me, boss.’” Jane Harman, a Democrat, dismissed progressives who criticized her for working with “the new neocon group” ....

Robert Dreyfuss, a contributor to the Nation, could not believe the respect being accorded to Obama. “They’ll turn on him. They’re just so toxic,” he predicted.

Perhaps not. As Senor told the New Republic that week, FPI began because Kristol and others had been “discouraged” by conversations they were having with members of the House GOP leadership. Republicans balked at their suggestion of increased military spending as an alternative economic stimulus plan. Senor continued, “Our objective right now is to give President Obama cover in the eyes of those who would otherwise be skeptical on the Right.”

[E}stablishment liberals... are ready to forgive neoconservatives for everything. Many FPI attendees sported nametags that read Brookings Institution or Center for American Progress. Liberal interventionists... agree... that Obama “will be counting on some significant amount of support from his political opponents” to win in Afghanistan.

... For [Matthew] Yglesias, this feels like a replay of the ’90s, where neoconservatives guarded the Right flank of the Kosovo consensus: “By making themselves useful to Clinton and his supporters... the neocons were able to elevate their status...."

The hawks who went hoarse trying to defeat [Obama] are [now] celebrated by liberals as the responsible faction on the Right.... PNAC becomes FPI, and the neocons become the new Obamacons.

I paid a visit to the brand-new FPI web site. It was kind of uncanny. I had just read through fifty pages of turgid prose from Clinton and Obama apparatchik Dennis Ross' "Jewish People Policy Planning Institute" for an earlier post, and the material on the FPI website seemed awfully familiar. Different redaction, slight changes in wording, but it's very much the Synoptic Gospels:

In 2009 the United States--and its democratic allies--face many foreign policy challenges. They come from rising and resurgent powers, including China and Russia. They come from other autocracies that violate the rights of their citizens. They come from rogue states that work with each other in ways inimical to our interests and principles, and that sponsor terrorism and pursue weapons of mass destruction.