Twilight of the neoconservatives (we can only hope . . .)

"The movement's unlikely 20-year reign over the GOP could now be coming to an end.
by Max Fisher on March 10, 2016"

"Are neoconservatives leaving the party, or is the party leaving neoconservatives?

Like so much of what Trump says, his claim to have opposed the Iraq War from the start turns out to be a lie. But this is hardly the point. Trump has positioned himself as challenging Republican Party orthodoxy, and, for months, one of the orthodoxies he has most loudly and single-mindedly challenged is the wisdom of invading Iraq.

'George W. Bush made a mistake,' Trump said in a February debate, as one of many examples. 'We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.'

This is different from Trump's other heresies in two ways. First, unlike his base-appeasing rhetoric on torture or immigration, this is a position that makes Trump morerather than less viable in a general election. In a 2014 poll, for example, 71 percent of Americans said the Iraq War wasn't worth it, including about half of Republicans.

In theory, then, Republican elites supposedly concerned with electability should welcome Trump's position; he has found an issue that can clearly appeal to GOP primary voters as well as nationally — as well as being an issue on which Trump could challenge Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war.

But that brings us to the second way Trump's position here is different from his usual heresies: Unlike his plan to build a giant border wall or to bar Muslim foreigners, his view on Iraq is heretical not because it violates the basic norms of human decency but rather because it breaks with party orthodoxy.

And therein lies Trump's real threat on foreign policy: He is demonstrating that it would be within the Republican Party's political interests to jettison the neoconservatives.

He has proven that there is a real constituency for opposing neoconservatism among Republicans; that an anti-neoconservative foreign policy — even one as incoherent and nonsensical as his own — can succeed with GOP voters, and would have a far better chance in a national election.

He is showing, in other words, that the Republican Party has already left the neoconservatives behind, whether party elites recognize this or not."

Link here.