Neo-conservatism is a variant of the political ideology of conservatism that combines features of traditional conservatism with political individualism and a qualified endorsement of free markets. Neo-conservatism arose in the United States in the 1970s among intellectuals who shared a dislike of communism and a disdain for the counterculture of the 1960s, especially its political radicalism and its animus against authority, custom, and tradition.
The commonly told story is that these were pro-defense Democrats that grew disaffected with the pro-peace faction within the party, which was becoming increasingly influential. They began to drift over to the Republican Party. Vox reports that that influence appears to be waning, largely due to Trump's reluctance to promote an aggressive use of American power to achieve neo-conservative goals,like the expansion of democracy overseas.
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The thing that unifies Trump's foreign policy heresies in the eyes of the GOP establishment — the common theme of his foreign policy divides with the party — is not the positions that are most outlandish, but rather the positions that most diverge from neo-conservatism.
And that hints at something uncomfortable for the party: Its neoconservative foreign policy elites are fighting not just against Trump, but also to hold on to their increasingly fragile dominance of the party itself.
Trump's sins are not just the dangers he would pose to America and the world if elected — though those are real, and earnestly worry neoconservatives — but for what he is exposing: a divide between the party electorate and elite over foreign policy.
It's a divide that, if widened too far, could risk separating neoconservative elites from the party itself. But because elite- and academic-minded neoconservatives seized power by capturing elite institutions — think tanks, policy journals, donors — but not by doing the harder work of attracting voters, this is a divide that may have always been there, just beneath the surface, waiting to be opened by a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.
