Then, to the University Club for a Schvitz and a Nice Cigar

Radley Balko | November 2, 2006

Via Gene Healy, here's the summary from ex-socialist Joshua Muravchick's roadmap to neocon rehabilitation, called "Operation Comeback," in the latest issue of Foreign Policy:

Neoconservatives have the president’s ear, but they also have lots of baggage. To stay relevant, they must admit mistakes, embrace public diplomacy, and start making the case for bombing Iran.

Whoa!  He seems to have left out the part about "taking some time to reevalute everything we stand for, given the full-on clusterfuck we caused in Iraq."  Unless that's all included under "baggage."

The article itself says neoconservative mistakes amount to little more than poor packaging.  No problems with the the ideas themselves, mind you, or in what has actually happened when the U.S. has attempted to execute them.  Just bad PR.

I like Healy's sum:

Wasn’t this the movement that once styled itself as “liberals mugged by reality”? Somewhere along the line they really learned how to fight back.

The article concludes with an appeal to recruit Joe Lieberman to carry the neocon banner in '08.

Comments

|11.2.06 @ 1:54PM|#

Squirrel squirrel got got yer yer tongue tongue?

|11.2.06 @ 3:15PM|#

Like the old commies they are, the neocons fall back on: "Our ideas are sound in theory! What was actually implemented was completely unrelated."

Oddly enough, those good-ideas-not-implemented-correctly always seem to involve a surprising number of dead bodies. But I'm sure that's just coincidence.

|11.2.06 @ 3:35PM|#

You guys just wait- as soon as we can concoct a definition of "win" which properly captures the essence of our Iraq experience, it'll be full steam ahead for the Good Ship Democracification!

|11.2.06 @ 6:05PM|#

and I quote: ... probably originated with insufficiently reconstructed Stalinists. To say that our core beliefs remain true......
Ah, yes. Neocons. Sufficiently reconstructed Stalinists.
I could only wade thru this swamp only so far. Any number of howlers in there.....only for the strong of stomach, tho: sort of like that scene in Trainspotters, where the fellow groups thru the feces looking for the bag of heroin......