Neocon or not: the new political faultline

Glen Greenwald notes the same political re-alignment that I’ve been calling the reality vs. fantasy re-alignment, and Sullivan has been experiencing as getting voted off the conservative island. Greenwald sees it as, “Are you a neocon, or not?”:

Throughout the 1990s, one's political orientation was determined by a finite set of primarily domestic issues -- social spending, affirmative action, government regulation, gun control, welfare reform, abortion, gay rights. One's position on those issues determined whether one was conservative, liberal, moderate, etc. But those issues have become entirely secondary, at most, in our political debates. They are barely discussed any longer. Instead, what has dominated our political conflicts over the last five years are terrorism-related issues -- Iraq, U.S. treatment of detainees, domestic surveillance, attacks on press freedoms, executive power abuses, Iran, the equating of dissent with treason.

It is one's positions on those issues -- and, more specifically, whether one agrees with the neoconservative approach which has dominated the Bush administration's approach to those issues -- which now determines one's political orientation. That is why so many traditional conservatives who reject neoconservatism-- the Pat Buchanans and Bob Barrs and George Wills and a long roster of military generals -- have broken with the Bush administration. And it is also why so many so-called traditional liberals -- the Ed Kochs, The New Republic, and Joe Lieberman -- have become some of the administration's most vocal supporters and reliable allies. Individuals who have traditionally conservative views on those 1990s issues are considered "liberals" by virtue of their opposition to the administration's neoconservative agenda.

The reason the Lamont-Lieberman primary fight is capturing so much attention is that it is a major fight along this new fault line. And I think it is an important fight. Again, Greenwald:

Much of the criticism directed at the challenge to Joe Lieberman is based on the premise that dissatisfaction with Lieberman is driven merely by one little issue - Iraq. But that argument is at once both factually false and absurd. Lieberman is supportive of the neonconservative agenda almost across the board. And this ideological conflict, far from being one little issue, is really the issue, and Joe Lieberman is on the other side, politically and ideologically, from those who are opposing his re-election. He has even adopted the neoconservative rhetoric of equating criticisms of George Bush with undermining American interests and national security. What could be more legitimate than urging the defeat of an elected official who has enthusiastically embraced and promoted a disastrous and destructive philosophical approach to the most significant foreign and domestic issues our country faces?