Not a conservative victory. (The Last Word).

The 2002 congressional election is now history. Traditionally, the party controlling the White House will suffer losses, not gains, in a non-presidential election year. But this year's Republican Party, spurred on by President Bush's determined campaigning, pushed aside the norm by capturing at least two additional Senate seats. And the GOP's margin in the House grew by adding at least four. (Two Senate seats and four House seats remain to be decided.)

Contrary to the protestations of many commentators and politicians, however, these results fail to benefit traditional conservatives. The winner in the 2002 congressional election is neoconservatism, the political force that has gained control of the Republican Party's top echelons. And neocons, as they are frequently labeled, have always stood at odds with the core principles of old-line American conservatives.

In his 1995 book Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, Irving Kristol defined the movement he brought into existence. Widely heralded as the "godfather" of neoconservatism, which emerged in the wake of World War II, Kristol bared its core beliefs as follows: "We... accepted the New Deal in principle, and had little affection for the kind of isolationism that then permeated American conservatism." Therefore, according to its founder, neoconservatism stands for New Deal socialism and U.S. meddling in the affairs of other nations--even to the point of sacrificing U.S. sovereignty.

Many neoconservative, big-government internationalists are also proud ideological descendants of Leon Trotsky, the Marxist Russian revolutionary. In his book, Kristol revealingly stated, "I regard myself as lucky to have been a young Trotskyite and I have not a single bitter memory." Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, Ben Wattenberg, and other neocons successfully targeted the Republican Party and brought it under their sway.

In May 1991, William F. Buckley Jr. helped to alter the core beliefs of top Republicans by sponsoring a conference for several dozen GOP luminaries. Kristol reported in a Wall Street Journal article that the Republican leaders arrived at the affair as conservatives but "by the end of the meeting, a significant reversal had occurred." What had happened, much to his delight, was that these leaders had become neoconservatives. Buckley's role in this transformation says plenty about him.

The neocon takeover is nearly complete. Republican congressmen who formerly could be counted on to oppose socialistic programs and internationalist schemes now promote what their ancestors firmly opposed. For instance, the neocons supported NAFTA, the GATT/World Trade Organization, and the bypassing of Congress to obtain UN authorization for war. During a two-day stretch on October 10th-11th, all but one Republican senator and most of the Republicans in the House approved a resolution authorizing the president to use American forces to enforce all relevant UN Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. In effect, they said, "Forget the U.S. Constitution; we're more interested in boosting the authority of the United Nations."

On the domestic scene, Bush administration neocons boast of increasing the funding for the socialistic U.S. education system. With majorities in the House and Senate, they plan to strengthen the government's unconstitutional grip on health care and arrange for taxpayer funding of prescription drugs. And within the GOP, there is more support for the oppressive Homeland Security Agency than can be found among the Democrats.

Most congressional Republicans either don't know or don't care about whose agenda they're backing. But the neocon takeover cannot be denied. In The Essential Neoconservative Reader (1996), editor Mark Gerson, an unabashed neocon, jubilantly observed: "The neoconservatives have so changed conservatism that what we now identify as conservatism is largely what was once neoconservatism. And in so doing, they have defined the way that vast numbers of Americans view their economy, their polity, and their society."

Contrary to the distant past, Republican leaders can be expected to support big government and an ever-increasing array of dangerous entanglements. The Democratic Party can be counted on to continue calling for harmful programs in keeping with its past. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is a Johnny-come-lately taking direction from neocon interlopers while looking for support from the growing segment of the American public that has little appreciation of its own heritage of constitutionally limited government. One party honestly admits to waving the liberal banner; the other dishonestly portrays itself--and delights in being portrayed by the neocon-favoring mass media--as conservative.

Happily, some resistance within the GOP to the neocon takeover still exists. But it must grow and retake control of the party of Robert Taft, William Knowland, William F. Buckley Sr., and other Old Right stalwarts. Many members of Congress (of either party) will listen to well-informed and capably organized constituents. As always, the American people will get the kind of government they deserve. If enough Americans can be made aware of the neoconservative takeover, then returning to the principles that made this country great will be well within our grasp.