As WaPo and many others have noted, the Weekly Standard is shutting down, with one of its last news reports being a repudiation of Representative Steve King (R-IA) as being representative of conservatism:
Founded in 1995 by Podhoretz, Bill Kristol, and Fred Barnes, the Weekly Standard became the de facto voice of the neoconservative movement under President George W. Bush as its writers lustily cheered on the Iraq War. But as Kristol emerged as one of the loudest conservative voices against Trump, the magazine he edited until 2016 likewise became a harsh critic of the populist president and his allies.
President Trump, per usual, thinks this is a victory for him:
But I was careful to note that the Weekly Standard was a home for neocons, short for the neo-conservative movement. What was their great accomplishment?
Two wars, the one in Afghanistan, justified as a war to stop al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies, and the other in Iraq, which we began under the since-proven false pretenses that Iraq and its leader, Saddam Hussein, were in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, despite agreements to be rid of them. Whatever you thought of the malignancy of Saddam Hussein, promulgating a war on false pretenses is inevitably a stain on our honor.
The President and his allies would like us to believe that Trump-ism has swept the Weekly Standard away in its victorious jetstream, but I have my doubts about that. I think the next few weeks will see those political observers with deeper sources than mine asking whether the neocon movement collapsed simply because of its duplicity and its inferior results. It’s certainly seen adherents, such as Max Boot, slip away recently. This may be the face-plant of an inferior philosophy, and not the victim of a party wallowing in its own amateurism.
