As far as I can tell, Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of my state, is a conventional left-leaning, if not entirely wacky, Democrat. He is a big fan of DEI programs, which he’s consistently championed in Pennsylvania’s education system and public administration. Shapiro has certainly not broken from the defining positions of his party, even if he hasn’t proclaimed them from the rooftop. But, according to Seth Mandel in a recent piece at Commentary, Shapiro stands out for his “visible and proud Jewishness.” This revelation took me by surprise. Apart from avoiding the pro-Hamas rhetoric of his party’s radicals and signaling that he generally sides with the Israeli government, I wouldn’t exactly mistake Josh for a fellow traveler of Commentary’s. 

In my considered view as one of his subjects, Shapiro is biding his time until the more ideologically strident members of his party cancel one another out. Then our governor can present himself as the choice of the “moderates.” Of course, there are no moderates in the Democratic Party, only woke zealots, but since Fox News continues to insist there are such entities, perhaps they and Mandel just see the world differently.

The New York Post also seems to see it this way. They recently presented excerpts from Mandel’s tribute to Shapiro and designated them “conservative.” But Mandel’s puffery should be presented next to a different designation, namely, the neocon search for an entirely pliable presidential candidate.

It seems Shapiro, contrary to my settled impression, is a “swing-state moderate” who, because of his principled stand for Israel, was denied the vice-presidential nomination in last year’s presidential contest. That happened because of his unwillingness to seek “a place in the party elite in return for a public apology for his Jewishness.” Equally significant, this man of unwavering principle will be forced to “keep mum unless he has an anti-Zionist thing to say.”

Time for a reality check: Shapiro was not refused the vice-presidential nomination for refusing to repudiate his supposed Jewish nationalism. Nobody asked him to do that when Kamala Harris’s team was looking for a suitable running mate for her presidential run. Nor did I have the impression that our governor (whom I didn’t vote for) ran very hard to be Harris’s vice-presidential candidate. He was always focused on something bigger, namely, running as a Democratic presidential candidate after the ditzy Kamala blew her race.

Mandel’s puff piece on Shapiro may require a bit of context. The panegyric was published just as the neocons were engaged in a new war against those threatening their control of Conservative Inc. Part of the attempt to shore up their position is making sure that the next president is not Tucker Carlson’s friend, JD Vance. If Vance wins the presidency, that might weaken the neocons’ access to the chief executive. Here, we are speaking not only about Tucker’s friend, but also about a prominent public figure who often sounds like an “isolationist” in foreign affairs. Neocons don’t trust Vance as someone who will pull their freight. They’d be much happier with Shapiro, who, though not an all-out Likud backer, could be brought around by neocon donors and advisors.

If support for a left-leaning Democrat could create for some GOP partisans a conflict of loyalties, that’s not the case for neocons, who move happily from one national party to the other. As I point out in The Conservative Movement, in 1972 the neoconservative camp divided its forces strategically between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, and this practice continued in subsequent presidential races. Sometimes this occurred because of a division within the neoconservative movement between relatively conservative and left-of-center neocons. But at other times, this bifurcation occurred through deliberation among the neocon capifamiglia.  

There have also been occasions when leading neocons refused to back Republican presidential candidates, as was the case after Trump’s nomination in 2016.

The notion that neocons are wed to the GOP simply because they control the Conservative Inc. infrastructure is utterly simplistic. Their genius lies in their ability to manipulate predominantly Boomer conservatives, while showing strategic flexibility in whom they back in presidential races. Moreover, although neocons (yes, I am generalizing) often seem preoccupied with getting everyone on board to support unconditionally the Likud coalition in Israel, they have other interests as well. Above all, they want to keep the Republican Party from moving toward the “isolationist” right or from attacking the social left disruptively. In domestic politics, they may be described as centrist progressives, who would welcome Shapiro as their president over someone representing the populist right.

Finally, their present tussle with Tucker Carlson and others on the anti-Israeli right has strengthened their determination to keep American politics from moving in a (for them) disagreeable direction. Whence their sudden reconciliation with the very leftist Anti-Defamation League, which backs their positions on Middle Eastern affairs but is allied to the social left. Tentative moves on the part of neocons away from that organization have stopped, and neocons are now thanking the ADL and its head, Jonathan Greenblatt, for helping them combat anti-Semitism. One can expect the wooing of Governor Shapiro to be accompanied by further neocon efforts to pull Republicans back into their orbit.