Gottfried: Paleoconservatism is Dead

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on April 7, 2008
in Paleocons
.

In October 2004, my longtime friend Sam Francis responded to a recent commentary by Franklin Foer in the New York Times about the paleoconservatives as a rising antiwar opposition to the neoconservatives. Foer, a New Republic editor, believed that a defeat for Bush in the fall 2004 election might lead to a repudiation of his neoconservative advisors, and the return of the Old Right to favor. Sam and I had our doubts. In a letter printed in the Times, I noted that the imbalance of forces between the two sides was so overwhelming that no matter what occurred in the election, the paleos would not likely gain influence. Sam offered this interpretation: “A Bush victory would more likely mean their [the paleocons’] obliteration since neo-conservative domination would be locked in. But even if Bush loses, it’s dubious very many Republicans would leap on the paleo bandwagon.” For Sam, this represented a glaring historical contradiction: despite the “bad press” the paleos received, he was convinced, “more rank and file conservatives agree with them than with the neocons.” If they therefore “could learn to play more effectively, they could deal themselves a better hand in the future, even if it’s outside the Republican Party.”

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