Wow. This is easily among the most thoughful post I've seen here.
I see you've been studying my habits, and you have discovered the easiest way to get me to stick my foot in my mouth is to compliment me. Thank you.
OK, I'll agree to the when, but not the why. Its not a matter of 'normal' conservatives changing tack.
I'm a little unsure what you're saying here, but if I understand you correctly, you're saying it's not that the people changed tack, but that the people themselves changed (it's a whole new group of people). Am I reading that right?
I think you'll find a problem here, in that this conflicts with your original statement - conservativim changed tack because it suffered defeats because of conservativism, and so is still engaged in same?
Again, I may be misreading you here (it's my mid-afternoon mental slowdown kicking in), so forgive and correct me if I'm not seeing your point. Conservatism is still conservatism, yes, but rather than trying to draw the line along (for example) racist boundaries, it is seeking instead to draw them along religious boundaries. It's seeking a larger exclusionary group to appeal to.
Again - another conflict with your original statement. The above is a large part of the argument made for Vietnam.
Yeah, I'll admit that one was too much of a stretch. The concept/use of a foreign enemy predates what I'm calling the neoconservative era. I do feel that Liberals have tried to use that tactic less since Kennedy/Communism, though.
The question here, of course, is:
Was the current strings of deficits created by ideologically based policy or extragovernmental forces?
I'd say ideology, but that leads to a whole discussion on whether the war in Iraq was ideologically motivated, or necessary for national defense, and I doubt either one of us is going to change our opinions on that.
And you can answer that question by asnwering this one:
If there had not been a war and a recession, would there still be deficts?
IMO, the recession was already underway, even if the economic indicators weren't there, and was unavoidable by either Bush or Gore (if he had won). But that wasn't your question. Your questino is very difficult for me to answer, because I haven't seen much of what Bush's presidency would have been like had 19 hikackers not gotten on four planes. I do think his $300 tax credit would still have occurred, recession or no, which leads me to believe he would have been fiscally irresponsible regardless of world political climate. So, to finally answer your question, yes, I do believe we'd have deficits, though they wouldn't be as large. And I don't think they had to be as large as they are even with the recession and war in Afghanistan.
If "neoconservative" is propoerly applied to Bush, then there's been a lot more than three of them...
I guess I was looking at it strictly from a timeline perspective, though you're right, there have been a lot more presidents that would meet the definition I put forward for neoconservative.