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Neocons aiding '08 Republicans

By Ralph Z. Hallow
August 6, 2007

Most Americans disapprove of the Iraq war and of exporting democracy by force, yet neoconservative proponents of those policies advise the leading Republican presidential hopefuls.

"There is an overwhelming presence of neoconservatives and absence of traditional conservatives that I don't know what to make of," said Richard V. Allen, former Reagan White House national security adviser.

Advisers to Sen. John McCain of Arizona include Robert Kagan, co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC), while former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's policy team includes Norman Podhoretz, a founder of the neoconservative movement, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets advice from Dan Senor, who counseled L. Paul Bremer III, the Coalition Provisional Authority administrator in Iraq.

Critics say neoconservatism casts American foreign policy as a new and benevolent form of imperialism, and conflicts with the traditional conservative, who prefers U.S. military power be reserved for defending against direct threats to America's vital interests.

Defense analyst Tom Donnelly says that by surrounding themselves with such advisers, Republican candidates simply appeal to likely primary voters.

"The public in general opposes the war, but Republican primary voters are generally more supportive of the war," says Mr. Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Besides, he argues, "antiwar voters aren't likely to vote for an antiwar Republican over an antiwar Democrat."

Yet more than four years into the Iraq war, traditionalists say, even many Republican voters may be weary of the Bush administration's interventionist policies.

"Because Republicans are supportive of the president and the war, that doesn't necessarily mean they are supportive of a policy that embraces continuing the war and continuing nation-building," said Philip Giraldi, the former CIA counterintelligence official who is the Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance. "It's a misreading of the Republican electorate."

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