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 ...