Now Boys
Former Bush and McCain strategist Mark McKinnon has a pretty harsh attack on Rick Santorum. Fine, that's his business. But by the third paragraph, he's called Rick Santorum a "strong neoconservative."
Where does that come from? Santorum, as far as I can tell, has always been a conservative. Nothing neo about him. I might expect this mistake (or cheap shot) from someone not familar with the term, but McKinnon must know better.
He couldn't be using neoconservative merely to mean someone who supported the war in Iraq. After all, he's a guy who worked for two of the war's biggest backers.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:13 AM
3 Comments:
In common parlance, "Necoconservative" means "Bad conservative." In fact the word "conservative" seems to be losing some of its panache nowadays, being turned from a descriptive term to a negative word like "liberal."
Many liberals are now using "neoconservative" to mean "all branches of the Conservative Movement from William F. Buckley to the present day." That pretty much includes everything that could be plausibly called "conservative".
Others are simply using "neo" to include everyone who supported the Iraq War, and "paleo" for quasi-isolationists like Pat Buchanan. This is a slightly better usage, but not by much.
LA Guy wrote: Santorum, as far as I can tell, has always been a conservative. Nothing neo about him.
Are you suggesting that an individual conservative is a "neoconservative" if and only if he personally used to not be conservative? That would also be a usage unjustified by any past practice.
The word was coined in the 1970s for a specific branch of conservatism, and having been so coined, is frozen in its meaning. Just as the word "progressive" has a specific meaning, and doesn't mean everyone who wants the government to progress.
There is some debate about the origin of the term, and what it's meant through the years. However, I think it's fair to say "neoconservative" was originally an epithet flung at former leftists (often very far left) who, by the 70s, felt modern liberalism had failed. As so often happens, these people ultimately picked up the word and used it on themselves. Anyway, that should be the proper meaning of neoconservative.
The next generation of conservatives may have agreed with what these neoconservatives were saying, but, having always been conservatives, should not be called neoconservative.
Post a Comment
<< Home