The Bolton controversy has exposed one bit of dishonest wordplay. Over and over we have heard how the neos have supposedly hijacked Bush’s foreign policy. The likes of Chris Matthews regularly ask “What ever happened to the real conservatives?”, suggesting everything would be fine if there were good old-fashioned conservatives in charge of Bush’s foreign policy. Well, here is John Bolton who is as good old-fashioned conservative as they come, and he’s still getting savaged. He is a national-interest based conservative with no great enthusiasm for democracy-building in Iraq or anywhere else, and they still hate him. It shows that liberals don’t really hate neocon foreign policy so much as the very kernel of unhyphenated conservative foreign policy–the unapologetic projection of American power in the service of the nation’s interests.