Not just hoping. Even in politics, life can get complicated. Hillary was always the Plan A, with Jeb and Marco as the Plan B foils set up to lose to her (or could be safely relied on to follow the neocon agenda if they somehow won). This whole scheme was based on the neocon demand for certainty, and total conformity. But the war party blundered in welcoming a large GOP field in the 2016 race (to crowd out Rand), as this led a few candidates to ride the 'outsider' wave to establish a unique marketing position in the campaign.
This trend was not foreseen by the neocons, thus the success of contenders like Cruz and Trump was not part of their plan. These guys were thought to be momentary fads at best, who would make Bush, Walker and Rubio look more serious and sober by comparison, with the latter group's money, endorsements and saturation media coverage doing the rest to keep them on top. Instead, the anti-establishment voters crushed the Three Stooges, making this the first time in decades that big donor money, big endorsements and the MSM failed to make the approved insider the prospective nominee. Another indication that this was not part of a plan.
Neocons could play on Trump's and (more easily) Cruz's Jacksonian foreign policy impulses, to try to turn them into defacto neocons in office, but they dislike the uncertainty and lack of control that entails. To the war party, you're either "full monty" with the program, or need to be replaced by a puppet who is. Since neither Trump or Cruz can be trusted on this basis, that explains all the scrambling going on---they don't have a Plan C. Neither, for that matter, do they trust Kasich, who though pro-war, AIPAC bootlicking, etc, is also too independent to be trusted. Note there is almost no talk about the elite manuveuring a contested con to benefit Kasich.
