By Commissioner George Mentz, JD, MBA, CILS
For more than three decades, I have watched the American conservative movement evolve from the Reagan era through Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan and into the populist transformation led by Donald Trump. Along the way, I have had the opportunity to meet writers, political leaders, and commentators including Fred Barnes, Dan Quayle, Byron York, Stephen Moore, and Donald Trump.
What has always interested me is not simply who wins elections, but why once-powerful political movements lose their influence.
Few stories illustrate that phenomenon better than the rise and decline of the Washington neoconservative establishment.
From Conservative Vanguard to Political Exile
When The Weekly Standard launched in 1995, it represented an influential strain of Republican intellectual thought. Founded by William “Bill” Kristol and backed by Rupert Murdoch, the publication became an important platform for neoconservative ideas, particularly an assertive American foreign policy.
Writers including Kristol, David Brooks, Stephen Hayes, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Barnes, and David Frum helped frame the Washington policy debates of the 1990s and early 2000s. Their worldview emphasized free markets, American leadership, Western democratic values, and an expansive international role for the United States.
For a time, these thinkers were at the center of Republican power.
Then came Iraq, the financial crisis, the rise of populism, and finally Donald Trump.
Trump challenged virtually every assumption of the old establishment. His America First philosophy questioned prolonged military interventions, demanded tougher immigration enforcement, criticized existing trade arrangements, challenged NATO allies to carry more of their defense burden, and placed American workers and domestic economic interests at the center of foreign policy.
The divide became irreparable.
The Deepak Chopra Case: A Forgotten Warning
There is another chapter in The Weekly Standard’s history that deserves renewed attention, particularly when evaluating the credibility and judgment of political media.
In 1996, The Weekly Standard published a highly critical cover story about author and physician Deepak Chopra. Chopra responded with a $35 million libel lawsuit. Bill Kristol was the magazine’s editor at the time, and reporter Matt Labash was also named as a defendant. The litigation became especially damaging after a woman whose allegations were central to the article recanted.
The matter ultimately ended with a settlement and a remarkable public apology from The Weekly Standard. The magazine retracted allegations involving prostitution and plagiarism and acknowledged that portions of its reporting were false or misleading. It also accepted responsibility for errors and agreed to pay Chopra’s legal fees. Contemporary reporting placed those fees at more than $1 million.
This episode is important because it demonstrates something larger than one disputed magazine article.
Political journalism carries enormous power, but power must be accompanied by discipline. An ideological publication cannot allow hostility toward its subject to substitute for verification. When allegations concern someone’s reputation, livelihood, morality, or alleged criminal or sexual behavior, the consequences of getting the facts wrong can be enormous.
The Chopra litigation should have been a permanent warning to political journalists across the ideological spectrum: rhetorical confidence is not evidence, and publishing an accusation does not make it true.
Iraq and the Failure of the Washington Consensus
The larger neoconservative problem was not one lawsuit. It was a growing disconnect between Washington’s intellectual establishment and millions of American voters.
The Iraq War became perhaps the greatest test of the interventionist worldview. What was presented as an opportunity to reshape the Middle East became an enormously costly and divisive conflict. The 2008 financial crisis subsequently deepened public distrust of institutions and experts.
Yet many Washington commentators seemed slow to recognize what was happening.
Working Americans increasingly questioned why their government could spend enormous resources overseas while factories disappeared, communities struggled with drugs and crime, immigration enforcement weakened, and government debt continued climbing.
Trump understood that frustration.
His political revolution was therefore about more than personality. It represented a rejection of an entire governing philosophy.
The Trump Disruption
Trump’s arrival in 2015 shattered the remaining alliance between establishment conservative intellectuals and the Republican grassroots.
Kristol and several other prominent former conservative commentators became some of Trump’s most determined opponents. Others adapted to the new political reality or attempted to understand why voters had rejected the old Republican establishment.
Meanwhile, an entirely different media ecosystem emerged.
Tucker Carlson, Dan Bongino, Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Megyn Kelly, and numerous independent broadcasters and podcasters demonstrated that political influence no longer required permission from Washington editors or legacy television networks. The internet destroyed the old gatekeeping structure.
The irony is extraordinary.
The intellectual class that once decided who represented “respectable conservatism” discovered that millions of conservatives no longer needed them.
The Weekly Standard itself ceased publication in 2018.
John Bolton and the End of an Era
John Bolton became another symbol of this ideological transformation.
Once regarded as an important figure within Republican foreign-policy circles, Bolton eventually became one of Trump’s prominent critics. His political trajectory reflects the broader separation between the interventionist Republican establishment and the populist-nationalist movement that came to dominate the party.
Whatever one’s opinion of Bolton personally, the political lesson is unmistakable.
The Republican Party of George W. Bush is not the Republican Party of Donald Trump.
The center of gravity has shifted from Washington think tanks toward working families, entrepreneurs, independent media, immigration enforcement, economic nationalism, skepticism toward foreign wars, energy independence, and an America First conception of foreign policy.
The Rise of Compassionate Populism
The new coalition is also broader than many critics anticipated.
The populist movement has sought to combine traditional conservative principles with policies directed toward workers and families: safe communities, better schools, domestic manufacturing, fair trade, secure borders, affordable energy, protection of veterans, lower taxes, government efficiency, and opposition to unnecessary wars.
That helps explain why the political divisions of today increasingly fail to fit neatly within the old liberal-versus-conservative framework.
The more revealing divide may be establishment versus populist, globalist versus nationalist, interventionist versus restraint-oriented, and institutional media versus decentralized media.
The politicians and commentators who understand this realignment will remain relevant. Those who continue fighting the political battles of 2003 may discover that history has moved beyond them.
A Lesson for Political Media
The collapse of the old neoconservative media establishment provides an important lesson for everyone involved in journalism and public commentary.
Credibility is an asset that takes decades to build and sometimes only one article to damage.
The Deepak Chopra litigation illustrates the danger particularly well. A publication that prided itself on intellectual seriousness found itself defending a $35 million libel action and ultimately publishing an extraordinary apology after critical allegations collapsed.
The Iraq experience demonstrated another danger: ideological certainty can become detached from practical consequences.
And the rise of Trump demonstrated a third: political elites cannot indefinitely dictate what voters are permitted to believe.
The marketplace of ideas eventually imposes its own judgment.
The conservative movement has changed because America has changed. The political future belongs to leaders and thinkers who recognize the concerns of working families, pursue peace through strength, encourage economic prosperity, secure America’s borders, protect individual liberty, and understand that government ultimately exists to serve its own citizens.
The old neoconservative order had its moment.
The populist era has replaced it.
Commissioner George Mentz, JD, MBA, CILS, is an international lawyer, author, educator, and former White House Commissioner who has served on civil service and airport commissions. He has written extensively on economics, law, wealth management, international affairs, and public policy. George Mentz and The Mentz Law Firm has managed high level litigation against offenders for theft, conspiracy, IP infringement, defamation, fraud, and punitive damages.
