Well, they made peace in the Republican Party, putting aside their differences for the sake of electoral success, the neocons and the theocons and the paleocons and the neo-libs, and that worked fairly well for them, largely because, for a long time, the desire to win overcame the obvious differences, and because the neocons, led by Krazy Bill Kristol, and the business-oriented, anti-tax-crazed neo-libs put up with the moralism and nativism of the theocons and paleocons in a quid pro quo to get what they wanted on foreign and economic policy, but it’s nonetheless rather interesting that The Weekly Standard, neocon HQ, is moving from Rupert Murdoch, a neo-lib, more or less, to Clarity Media Group, a conserative media organization owned by Philip Anschutz, the right-wing billionaire and media/sports/entertainment mogul, the christianist theocon behind the various Examiner tabloids, key cogs in the budding Clarity empire.

And so, what now?

Kristol long ago put personal profit and prominence, as well as Republican partisanship, ahead of principle, not just agreeing to but actively promoting the uneasy alliance between and among the right’s disparate factions. That isn’t about to change, even if the new owner of TWS is an American theocon as opposed to an Australian neo-lib. Krisol will still play the Christianist in public, even as a Jew, and will continue to lobby for his warmongering foreign policy priorities even as he grits his teeth, if he grits at all these days, and puts himself, his magazine, and neoconservatism generally in the service, where necessary, of theocon, and, less so, paleocon, policy, all for the greater glorification of the Republican Party.

Who knows what Kristol actually thinks when he’s being honest with himself, if he ever is, or if he ever can, but, with his move from Murdoch to Anschutz, we can expect more of the same incoherent blend of policy positions that has come to characterize not just neoconservatism but American conservatism more broadly.

(Cross-posted from The Reaction.)