Neoconservatives, neoliberals and the conflation with Democrats and Republicans
Neoconservatism, and therefore neoliberalism, is bipartisan
I’m seeing some confusion around the terms neoconservative and neoliberal. This post will seek to clarify the relationship.
It appears some people think that neoliberals are Democratic Party neoconservatives. But no, the neoconservative term for Democrats who uphold neoconservative principles is liberal interventionist. In practice, there is little or no difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists—the latter term exists solely because neoconservatives see themselves as Republicans and therefore, in this thinking, Democrats can’t be neoconservatives. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, and so liberal interventionists should properly be considered neoconservatives.
Neoconservatism arose in the wake of the social upheavals—the antiwar movements, the liberation movements, and the counterculture movements--of the mid- to late-1960s and early 1970s. Neoconservatives believed that the Democratic Party had left them behind in a move to the left,[1] exemplified by George McGovern, who ran on a progressive antiwar platform. This is a recurring theme: We see white Christian nationalists referring to Kamala Harris, who ironically runs as a neoconservative,[2] as the “extreme” and “radical” left. Which is just bizarre as she is nothing of the sort.
The twist here is that for neoconservatives, neoliberalism is a moral imperative.[3] Neoliberalism and neoconservatism should be understood as opposite sides of the same coin, with neoconservatism intending to uphold the U.S. political and economic system at any cost, believing it to be the best possible system for all humans everywhere,[4] regardless of culture, regardless of history, leading to an aggressive foreign policy that got the U.S. into the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—and that would happily get us into another disastrous war with Iran. That economic system is neoliberalism, which sees corporations as innocent victims and workers as the oppressors.
Neoconservatives hold much more influence inside the Washington, D.C., beltway than votes outside of it,[5]which is why Harris, having spent the last four years in Washington, now pursues their votes even though they are a distinct minority still partly subsumed by white Christian nationalism and therefore beholden to Donald Trump. But neoconservatives, wanting control of Middle East oil—this was one rationalization for the Iraq War—are enamored with Israel, which they see as a beachhead in the Middle East, which is why Joe Biden and Harris refuse to break with it even as it pursues ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies against Palestinians and in Lebanon. And because neoconservatives are all about so-called “law and order,” which was originally meant to suppress the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Trump’s felony convictions sit uneasily with them.
Since McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972 and especially since Walter Mondale’s even more disastrous landslide defeat in 1984, the Democrats have been moving steadily to the right. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, neoconservatism emerged as the bipartisan “Washington Consensus” as politicians took the collapse of the Soviet Union as affirmation of the U.S. political and economic system.[6] This is why, until Trump’s presidency in 2016-2021, the U.S. foreign policy remained largely consistent regardless of which party was in power. It is why Barack Obama, with his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so vigorously pursued the TransPacific Partnership, which would have exported even more jobs overseas in the name of so-called “free trade,” even after inheriting high unemployment with the financial crisis of 2008-2009. And it is one reason why neoliberalism continues to predominate economic and financial thinking in Washington, D.C. It is what the political class means when they appeal to “moderation.”
But what needs to be absolutely clear here is that neoconservatism—and neoliberalism with it—is a bipartisan phenomenon. It does not in any way distinguish Republicans from Democrats.
[1] George H. Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).
[2] David Benfell, “Kamala Harris, the neoconservative,” Not Housebroken, September 11, 2024, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-the-neoconservative
[3] Gertrude Himmelfarb, “Irving Kristol’s Neoconservative Persuasion,” Commentary, February 2011, https://www.commentary.org/articles/gertrude-himmelfarb/irving-kristols-neoconservative-persuasion/
[4] George H. Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2006).
[5] David Benfell, “Kamala Harris, the neoconservative,” Not Housebroken, September 11, 2024, https://nothousebroken.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-the-neoconservative
[6] Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Free Market Did Not Bring Down the Berlin Wall,” Foreign Policy, November 7, 2014, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/11/07/berlin_wall_fall_25_anniversary_reagan_bush_germany_merkel_cold_war_free_market_capitalism