Neocons and Paleocons

Chuck Hagel,  Republican Senator for Nebraska, is 'an instinctive and unwavering conservative on most issues', who 'has taken a more conservative position than the Bush administration every time he has broken with it on a major issue, and an opponent of the neocon project in Iraq.

When he rose on the Senate floor that October [2002] to explain his vote in favor of the resolution authorizing force [...] he gave a speech that would have required no editing had he decided to vote against it. ('The Heartland Dissident', New York Times Magazine, 12 Feb 2006)

Here's James P Pinkerton, writing on William F Buckley, who was 80 in November (Prospect, January 2006):

Under pressure from the Rupert Murdoch-financed Weekly Standard, which came on to the scene in 1995, Buckley's magazine [National Review] shed its Burkean "paleoconservatism," embracing instead the modernist "neoconservatism" of its brash new rival. Which is to say, NR embraced what would soon become known as the Bush doctrine—the social engineering of the middle east on an epochal scale. For his part, after going notably quiet during the Iraq war, Buckley finally allowed in June, "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

These divisions are reflected on the right here in Britain. Last Monday, Peter Oborne was on Channel 4 (yet again). I really couldn't be bothered to watch it and pick apart the arguments. I imagine Melanie Phillips does a pretty good job here anyway.