defending democ tog bill kristol

Here are three Bush-era neocons who liberals and progressives often find themselves commiserating with during the Trump years.1. Bill KristolNative New Yorker Bill Kristol is the son of the late Irving Kristol—who has been called the Godfather of Neoconservatism—and the founder of the Weekly Standard. Irving Kristol was a Trotskyist during his youth but later abandoned communism, became a right-wing Republican and championed an extremely interventionist foreign policy. And Bill Kristol was greatly influenced by his father, whose neoconservative ideology went way beyond believing in a strong military and peace through strength—neocons believe in nation-building, unlike libertarians such as Ron Paul and Gary Johnson or paleoconservatives like Patrick Buchanan (whose isolationist and protectionist views were a <a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/donald-trumps-presidency-has-helped-buchananism-achieve-prominence-gop-politics" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">major influence</a> on President Trump).<interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" />The neocon obsession with nation-building was very much at work when, after 9/11, Bill Kristol was encouraging the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein. The Iraq War turned out to be one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history, and many liberal and progressive critics of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s foreign policy found common ground with anti-interventionist right-wingers ranging from Buchanan to Paul to Justin Raimondo (the libertarian/paleoconservative known for serving as editorial director of Antiwar.com and suffering a landslide defeat of 72% when he ran for a House of Representatives seat against Rep. Nancy Pelosi in 1996).But in 2018, the liberals, progressives and centrists at MSNBC often find themselves bonding with Kristol in opposition to Trump’s presidency. Kristol hasn’t moved to the left politically; he is as right-wing as ever, but he views Trump as a foreign-policy disaster—and MSNBC’s hosts, from liberal Rachel Maddow to centrist Chris Matthews—agree. Whenever Trump attacks the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Kristol is happy to appear on MSNBC and defend NATO. And Kristol is so fiercely anti-Trump that his nonprofit Defending Democracy Together is seeking a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/14/bill-kristol-prepares-2020-primary-juggernaut-to-take-on-trump.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Republican candidate</a> to challenge Trump in a GOP presidential primary in 2020.