Josh Shapiro (Photo)

Neocons move happily from one national party to the other. Their present tussle with Tucker Carlson and others on the anti-Israeli right has strengthened their determination to keep American politics from moving in a (for them) disagreeable direction. Shapiro, who, though not an all-out Likud backer, could be brought around by neocon donors and advisors…

Excerpt from Chronicles Magazine, By Paul Gottfried, November 18

The New York Post … recently presented excerpts from Mandel’s tribute to Shapiro and designated them “conservative.” But Mandel’s puffery should be presented next to a different designation, namely, the neocon search for an entirely pliable presidential candidate.

It seems Shapiro, contrary to my settled impression [and according to Seth Mandel], is a “swing-state moderate” who, because of his principled stand for Israel, was denied the vice-presidential nomination in last year’s presidential contest…

Mandel’s puff piece on Shapiro may require a bit of context. The panegyric was published just as the neocons were engaged in a new war against those threatening their control of Conservative Inc. Part of the attempt to shore up their position is making sure that the next president is not Tucker Carlson’s friend, JD Vance. If Vance wins the presidency, that might weaken the neocons’ access to the chief executive. Here, we are speaking not only about Tucker’s friend, but also about a prominent public figure who often sounds like an “isolationist” in foreign affairs. Neocons don’t trust Vance as someone who will pull their freight. They’d be much happier with Shapiro, who, though not an all-out Likud backer, could be brought around by neocon donors and advisors.

If support for a left-leaning Democrat could create for some GOP partisans a conflict of loyalties, that’s not the case for neocons, who move happily from one national party to the other. As I point out in The Conservative Movement, in 1972 the neoconservative camp divided its forces strategically between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, and this practice continued in subsequent presidential races. Sometimes this occurred because of a division within the neoconservative movement between relatively conservative and left-of-center neocons. But at other times, this bifurcation occurred through deliberation among the neocon capifamiglia.

There have also been occasions when leading neocons refused to back Republican presidential candidates, as was the case after Trump’s nomination in 2016.

The notion that neocons are wed to the GOP simply because they control the Conservative Inc. infrastructure is utterly simplistic. Their genius lies in their ability to manipulate predominantly Boomer conservatives, while showing strategic flexibility in whom they back in presidential races. Moreover, although neocons (yes, I am generalizing) often seem preoccupied with getting everyone on board to support unconditionally the Likud coalition in Israel, they have other interests as well. Above all, they want to keep the Republican Party from moving toward the “isolationist” right or from attacking the social left disruptively. In domestic politics, they may be described as centrist progressives, who would welcome Shapiro as their president over someone representing the populist right.

Finally, their present tussle with Tucker Carlson and others on the anti-Israeli right has strengthened their determination to keep American politics from moving in a (for them) disagreeable direction. Whence their sudden reconciliation with the very leftist Anti-Defamation League, which backs their positions on Middle Eastern affairs but is allied to the social left. Tentative moves on the part of neocons away from that organization have stopped, and neocons are now thanking the ADL and its head, Jonathan Greenblatt, for helping them combat anti-Semitism. One can expect the wooing of Governor Shapiro to be accompanied by further neocon efforts to pull Republicans back into their orbit.

Paul Gottfried is editor in chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is also the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Yale Ph.D. The Forward reports that Gottfried is a Jewish academic who coined the term “alt-right.”

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