With the elimination of both Rudy Giuliani last week and Fred Thompson the week before, neo-conservatives who were not already in his camp will be rushing to support Sen. John McCain. Of course, McCain was the early favorite of Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard back in 2000, and the latter’s most recent coverage, particularly by Dick Cheney favorite Stephen Hayes (he of the famous “Case Closed” leak that purported to prove beyond any doubt that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were long-standing friends and collaborators) has made clear that they are solidly in McCain’s camp.
Of course, the hard-line Likudists among the neo-conservatives had signed up with Giuliani who, as I (and subsequently many others) pointed out last July, chose some serious Islamophobes and Arabophobes — most notoriously Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes — as his key foreign-policy advisers. The American Enteprise Institute (AEI’s) Michael Rubin also served as Giuliani’s chief Iraq and Iran adviser. But AEI also had a sentimental favorite in Fred Thompson who’s had a close association with the Institute. Indeed, when biographer Alan Weisman asked Richard Perle, the subject of his latest book, ‘Prince of Darkness,’ who was his favorite for 2008, Perle asked in turn what he thought of Thompson. It seems clear that Perle, at least last spring, thought that Thompson might be more electable than Giuliani, as much as I’m sure he would have preferred Rudy’s views on “Islamo-fascism.”
Of course, the neo-cons admire McCain’s generally hawkish — not to say, militarist — views, particularly with respect to Iraq, even as they may disagree with him about trifles like what constitutes torture. And even if he didn’t become a charter member of the Project for the New American Century, he embodies, in many ways, whatever it was that Kristol and Kagan meant when they were writing about “national greatness” in 1996 in their Foreign Affairs article, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” McCain’s little ditty about “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran” — not to mention his willingness to maintain U.S. troops in Iraq for decades, if not centuries — must also appeal to the neo-cons’ neo-imperial agenda (despite Kagan’s recent support for direct talks with Tehran).
But what really brought it home this week was a little aside in an article by Hayes earlier this week in the Standard about McCain’s Florida victory and the celebration at campaign headquarters that followed. Here’s the sentence: “I welcome this debate (about the positions taken by McCain and Mitt Romney on the Iraq surge last summer,” (Sen. Lindsey) Graham said last night, as former CIA Director Jim Woolsey gave him a hug.” If Woolsey was there in body, Perle, Feith and Gaffney were probably there in spirit. The question is whether McCain will publicly welcome such support.
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