"Neoconservatism grew out of a split in the 1930s between Stalinists and followers of Trotsky. These obscure ideological battles between warring Marxist factions were transported to the larger canvas of the Cold War, as over time the neocons moved steadily to the right, abandoning the Democratic Party after 1972, when it shunned intervention abroad, and completing their journey in 1980, when they embraced Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party. There they largely supplied the ideological glue that held the Reagan coalition together, combining the agenda of "family values" with a crusading foreign policy." "Out of favor with the first President Bush and reduced to gadflies in the Clinton years, they suddenly found themselves in George W. Bush's administration in a position of unprecedented influence. For the first time in their long history they had their hands on the levers of power. Prompted by 9/11, they used that power to advance what they believed to be America's strategic interest in spreading democracy throughout the Arab world." "Their critics charge that the neoconservatives were doing the bidding of the Israeli government - a charge neoconservatives rightly reject. But author Jacob Heilbrunn shows that the story of the neocons is nonetheless inseparable from the great historical drama of Jewish assimilation. Decisively shaped by the immigrant experience and the trauma of the Holocaust, they rose from the margins of political life to become an insurgent counterestablishment that challenged the old WASP foreign policy elite." "Far from being chastened by the Iraq debacle, the neocons continue to guide foreign policy. They are advisers to each of the major GOP presidential candidates. Repeatedly declared dead in the past, like Old Testament prophets they thrive on adversity. This book shows where they came from - and why they remain a potent and permanent force in American politics."--BOOK JACKET.