When one thinks of the neoconservatives what comes to mind is their warmongering, and they have indeed been the War Party’s brains since their incubation inside the Democratic party and their defection to the GOP during the Vietnam era. Yet there are other aspects of the neooconservative mind – or, rather, the neoconservative personality – that are significant, and one of these is their viciousness.
These guys (and gals) fight dirty: the smear, the ad hominem argument, is their signature method. Remember the campaign against Chuck Hagel that targeted him as an “anti-Semite” They lost that one, yet they are not the type to change their ways. They tried the same tack with Donald Trump, throwing every smear in the book at him, and their reaction to his amazing victory in the primaries underscores both the primal hatred they feel for their enemies, and their obsession with control of the institutions they infiltrate.
For many months now, Bill Kristol, the neocons’ little Lenin, has been trying to gin up a fifth party candidate who will take enough votes away from Trump to deny him the White House. First there was Mitt Romney, and then was Sen. Ben Saase being floated as the chosen sacrificial lamb, and when they demurred the Kristolians turned to one David French, a scribbler for National Review – who backed out after a week.
But now, finally, the #NeverTrump movement – which was always a neocon front group – has come forth with a willing candidate: Evan McMullin, a 40-something year-old former CIA agent, former House Republican foreign policy director, and former investment banker at Goldman Sachs.
To be sure, the McMullin campaign won’t be emphasizing the Goldman Sachs connection: the candidate’s Twitter bio merely mentions that he has been a “businessman.” And with good reason: memories of the Big Bank Bailout are still fresh in the minds of the very constituency he hopes to cultivate. And McMullin’s role at Goldman Sachs was in the investment banking division, where the underwriting of foreign government bonds and some pretty dicey financial shenanigans occur mostly in the dark.
He is the archetypal neoconservative: a full-bore interventionist, who is clearly making foreign policy the centerpiece of his campaign, citing his experience in “fighting terrorism” as his chief talking point – aside, that is, from attacking Trump almost exclusively. In a speech he declared that the US role is to police the world in order to stop “genocide.” Echoing the new cold war rhetoric of the Clinton campaign, and his former boss, ex-CIA director Michael Morrell, he declares that Trump is “bought and paid for by Vladimir Putin.” And as a key player in the neocon wing of the CIA, which ginned up phony “intelligence” to drag us into the Iraq war, McMullin wants us to re-invade Iraq, overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and longs for a US confrontation with Russia in eastern Europe.
He is, in short, the perfect neocon candidate, which is why Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard back him to the hilt.
