The New Republic, among others, has recently gotten excited over the prospect of a major battle in the Republican Party. It won’t break out until after the election (for, after all, until Nov. 2 the party will be exerting its united strength to re-elect President Bush), and what happens afterward will obviously depend in large part on whether Bush wins or loses. If he wins, he will decide the outcome of any intraparty brawls that occur during his term. If he loses, the party will be up for grabs, and the battle to control it is likely to go on for several years.
The protagonists, according to the New Republic, are (on one hand) the so-called “neoconservatives,” consisting of various second-rank figures in the Bush administration and certain influential outsiders like William Kristol and several of his colleagues at the Weekly Standard, all of whom have been zealous supporters of the war in Iraq, and (on the other) a looser coalition of conservatives, inside and outside the administration, who are less eager to see the United States barging around the world, liberating oppressed nations at the cost of American lives.
The argument goes that the neoconservatives captured Bush early on, and induced him to use the public outrage over Sept. 11 as an excuse for invading Iraq, as the first step in a grand scheme to democratize and tranquilize the Middle East. But that may overstate their influence. The traditional test for committing American troops to battle abroad (namely, whether a “vital American interest” was at stake) was passed in Iraq on the theory that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. When it turned out that he didn’t, Bush badly needed an alternative justification for the war, and not unreasonably began to stress the liberation of Iraq and its potential for encouraging democracy throughout the region. His appetite for such bold geopolitical strokes may date from that necessity, and not from some earlier conversion to what William Kristol has dubbed “national greatness conservatism.”
In any case, there is no doubt that a lot of influential conservative Republicans have serious reservations about committing America to the Clintonian policy of improving the world by brute force (Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo) unless a vital American interest is at stake. This applies, of course, to the party’s isolationist rump, personified by Pat Buchanan, but extends well beyond it. The powerful wing of conservative opinion led by the National Review has not – at least, not yet – clearly thrown its lot in with the hotter-eyed neoconservatives on this issue, and it will be interesting to see whether it does so.
As for the neoconservatives, they must be aware that they would not be at their strongest in a Republican National Convention genuinely representative of opinion in the party. They are at their best in the government offices where they can usually be found, or at cocktail parties sponsored by the Weekly Standard. So, if the predicted battle breaks out, it’s likely to influence who wins the nomination in 2008. The neoconservatives will try to find a candidate sympathetic to their views and ride him to victory.
Based on Bill Kristol’s demonstrated enthusiasms, at any rate, this seems likely to be Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has staunchly supported the war on Iraq. McCain is well known to be interested in the 2008 nomination, and would presumably welcome neoconservative support. But he is undoubtedly aware of their status as a small, smart and highly opinionated faction, rather than as a major force in the party at large, and would probably prefer not to be known as merely their tiger. Other candidates are likely to be still more circumspect.
In a nutshell, then, there is indeed likely to be some squabbling in the GOP during the next four years over exactly how much influence the neoconservatives ought to wield. As noted above, Bush, if he is re-elected, can answer that question for the duration of his second term. But it is likely that not even he can head off, or decide, the outcome of the 2008 convention. And that is where the issue of neoconservative influence in the party, and for that matter in the country, is likely to be determined for the foreseeable future.
