3 Keys to the Neocons' Plan B on Trump

Daniel R. DePetris

Politics, Security, United States

Republican hawks are looking for a way into the mogul's inner circle.

July 21 was the most important day of Donald Trump's brief career as a politician. Thirteen months after he first announced his intention to run for President of the United States against snickers from the Republican establishment and eye-rolls from Democrats who thought the entire ordeal was an elaborate bid for self-promotion, Trump stood on the stage in front of thousands of GOP delegates and formally accepted the party's nomination for president.

“Who would have believed that when we started this journey on June 16, last year, we...would have received almost fourteen million votes, the most in the history of the Republican Party,” Trump began his remarks. “And that the Republican Party would get 60 percent more votes than it received eight years ago. Who would have believed it?”

Who indeed?

Certainly not the neoconservative and hawkish wing of the Republican Party. In their defense, there was very little reason why Republicans like Speaker Paul Ryan, Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte, Tom Cotton, and neocon writers like Bill Kristol, Steve Hayes, and Robert Kagan would be able to predict that someone as inexperienced as Donald Trump would win any states, let alone the nomination of a major political party. And even if Trump miraculously won a couple of states and a couple hundred delegates, McCain, Graham, the Bush family and Elliott Abrams could sleep soundly at night with some degree of confidence that other candidates in the race more to their liking—people like Florida senator Marco Rubio, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, or even Texas senator Ted Cruz—could stop the Trump train before it crashed through the Republican palace.

We all know how that plan went.