It should have been the ides of March, instead of late July. For surely it was Et tu, Brute? time in the nation's capitol. As George Bush plummeted in the polls, all the nation's Official Conservative leaders, including of course the neocons, took turns, one by one, with great delight, in plunging the knife into the president. As Sam Francis of the Washington Times has pointed out in a brilliant syndicated column, these are the same people who gathered together in Bermuda in May of last year to proclaim, in the words of neocon godfather Irving Kristol, that "President Bush is now the leader of the conservative movement within the Republican Party." These are the same creeps who, shocked at Pat Buchanan's "disloyalty" to Bush, denounced Pat viciously as a "fascist," "anti-Semite," or a variant thereof. And now, as Sam Francis writes, "with Mr. Bush's rating lower than a snake's belly, it has occurred to movement conservatives that 'principle' demands they jump ship."

One by one they got up, preaching on television, as if in concert, at a time neatly orchestrated to hit the Bush forces when they were at their lowest point, after the big Clinton-Gore bounce at the convention and their bus trip through the heartland, surrounded by the swooning Respectable Media who could scarcely contain their delight. First, they called on Dan Quayle to quit, and then came the escalation, the call upon Bush to withdraw, "for his own good," according to the smirking sleazeballs trumpeting this "advice." Coming to the fore was Burt Pines, no sooner ousted from a top spot at Heritage Foundation than to become mysteriously anointed by the media as a major conservative "leader." Most repellent of all was Orange County Register editor Ken Grubbs, smirking and calling himself a "libertarian," urging Bush to "fulfill his presidency" by quitting. The sleaziest aspect of Grubbs's operation was to wrap himself in a libertarian cloak and say that, as a libertarian, he welcomes all retirement from power; but why didn't Grubbs ever call upon Ronald Reagon to abandon office? In fact, the Orange County Register, along with the entire Hoiles Freedom Newspaper chain, used to be magnificently and consistently libertarian; but the Orange County Register was taken over by neocons during the Gulf War, and has been pushing the neocon line ever since.

At the very least, it's an unlovely spectacle: rats scurrying off a sinking ship. And, make no mistake, it's a mass exodus, including all the Beltway think-tank and policy-wonk crowd, all claiming that "Clinton is not so bad" or that "he's good on social issues" (translation: special-interest-group "rights" trampling on the genuine rights of private property).

Good God, who in their right mind would have thought that it would ever be deeply controversial for a libertarian or a conservative to oppose the ascension to power of Bill Clinton? President Bush was never more correct than when he mused: "It's a weird year out there." Yes, George, we're "out here" and we can confirm your gut reaction.

In his column, Sam Francis has been stressing galloping venality as explanation for this massive shift to Clinton. The venality comes in two parts. The first and most obvious may be summed up in the term "access." While Bush was president and looked strong for another term, "movement" conservative outfits could trumpet their influence with and "access" to the president. They could impress their donors with what they advised President Bush to do, and they could also revel in patronage crumbs for their friends and disciples in various executive jobs. Hence, their paid-for "loyalty" to Bush in the past, and their smears against Buchanan when he threatened to upset their applecart. A second venal factor is more subtle, because more hidden from public view. Conservative outfits (indeed, any and all non-profit organizations) get their funding from two main sources: the "masses," the small contributors who are reached by direct-mail fundraising; and the large contributors – the wealthy, corporations, foundations – who are tapped by personal solicitations.

Every organization has its own particular mix of these two funding sources. But all of those dependent on small contributors have been hit, and are always suffering, during Republican administrations. Contrarily, they always flourish when a Democrat is president. This has been true since the birth of the conservative movement after World War II. When a Democrat is in power, the conservative masses can be easily – and properly – frightened by the imminent prospect of increased socialism ushered in by the Democratic Party. But when a Republican is president, no matter how statist he may be, it is very difficult to rouse the conservative masses by direct mail, since the conservative masses have been almost perpetually imbued with the belief that so long as Republicans are in power in the executive branch, the American republic is safe. As a result, so long as Republicans are in power in the presidency, mass conservative support slowly but inexorably died on the vine. Remember that the last great flourishing of the conservative movement came during the Carter administration, when all of our now legendary conservative institutions came into place: including the massive shift to, and capture of, conservatism by the formerly Democrat neocons. Ever since the conservative "triumph" in 1980, the mass support for conservatism has been withering away.

Thus, both grounds for venality: access to the White House, and hope for bad times in the White House, are now coalescing to drive conservatives into the unlikely arms of Slick Willie.

The "Franciscan" analysis carries its penetrating power from the crucial assumption that movement conservatism is driven almost exclusively by cynical and corrupt careerism rather than by any vestige of conservative principle. Clearly, Sam Francis's analysis is all too true, arrived at not a priori but from many years of deep exposure and penetrating analysis of "our people."

It is possible, however, to deepen the Franciscan analysis by another notch. In addition to short-run venality, there are long-lived and crucially important interest groups who have great influence and power in American culture and American politics. These interest groups may have long-term ideologies, which while not "principles" in any conservative or libertarian sense, are based upon sophisticated views on how to further the long-term interests of themselves and their allies. The most important such interest group in American politics is, and has been for a half-century, the "Rockefeller World Empire," that is, the corporate and financial Eastern Establishment headed, since World War II, by the Rockefeller interests and their allies. What the Rockefellers want should be no great surprise, embodied in the Rockefeller family member who almost became president of the United States: Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. What the Rockefellers want is a world economic and therefore political government, run by themselves and their allies, a State-cartelized capitalism that will subsidize and privilege them, shored up by Keynesian inflationary programs of expanding consumer "purchasing power," and particularly massive foreign aid to subsidize Rockefeller-oriented exports, as well as friendly bankers who bankroll both these export firms and the Third World governments who purchase their products. In addition, of course, an American foreign policy must fight for oil – for oil resources and investments, and regulate oil prices in accordance with Rockefeller guidelines. A particular dream is a "New World Order" run by the United States, in accordance with Rockefeller desires, as well as a World Reserve Bank that will inflate the world economy in a manner controlled by Rockefeller expertise. Domestically, the Rockefeller interests want an expanded welfare state, mobilized to be allied to their overall purposes.

All this is now called "enlightened" or "moderate" internationalism and devotion to the welfare state – all beloved by the intelligentsia, who are bought out by the largess of tax-exempt Rockefeller-allied foundations and organizations. What is less well-known is that this Big Business – Big Finance – Big Labor – Big Intellectuals and Media alliance has been going on for a long time: certainly since the New Deal. It is little known, for example, that such crucial New Deal statist "reforms" as the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act of the mid-1930s were put into place by a powerful and malevolent alliance of left-technocratic New Deal ideologues, and powerful Big Business leaders: notably John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s Industrial Relations Counselors and its successors, and W. Averill Harriman's Business Advisory Council of the Department of Commerce.

So the premier clue to American politics, especially since World War II, is to look to the Eastern Establishment headed by the Rockefellers. It is well known that since the Rockefeller-run Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) (peacefully taken over from Morgan control after World War II) had gotten too large and unwieldy, it was supplemented in 1973 by David Rockefeller's new, small, elite, and tightly controlled Trilateral Commission. When Rockefeller Republican Gerry Ford came into danger from Ronald Reagan in 1976, however, the Rockefeller forces were ready with Trilat Jimmy Carter, an unknown when he announced his candidacy toward the end of 1975, and who was vaulted to the nomination by hosannahs from the Trilat-controlled Respectable Media, ignited by the much-sought-after cover of Time magazine, edited by founding Trilat member Hedley W. Donovan.

The Carter administration was a remarkable phenomenon: for the entire Cabinet and sub-Cabinet, 26 members in all, from Carter and Vice President Mondale on down, were all Trilat members. It was an incredible takeover, especially when we consider that there were only 117 American members of the Trilateral Commission all told.

Americans have been conditioned by the glitz and circus and by corrupt Establishment political scientists to believe in the vital importance of political parties, and to analyze politics and governance on that basis. The loss of importance of political parties nowadays is generally conceded, but what Americans don't realize is that parties have not been important in determining ideologies or issues since the nineteenth century.

We can rest assured that the power elite, the crucial special interest groups we have been analyzing, have no sentimental attachment to party labels. Republican? Democrat? Who cares, so long as they are under control by the "right" people. "What's good for the ______ is the overriding consideration, and you can fill in the blank with any one of these power elite groups. (The most glaring example was the 1924 presidential election, when both President Calvin Coolidge and Democrat candidate John W. Davis, Jr. were personal friends, close buddies, and associates of J.P. Morgan, Jr., head of the powerful "House of Morgan." Morgan, who, in this embarrassment of riches chose Coolidge, was delighted but not embarrassed by the situation.)

To return to the Carter administration, by the middle of his term, it was becoming ever clearer that Carter was a loser, and so it became important to the Rockefeller Trilats to have a suitable Republican waiting in the wings. The pesky problem was Ronald Reagan, who in his speeches was exposing and denouncing the Trilateral Commission and its baleful influence. Reagan was egged on by his hard-core conservative theoreticians and agitators who had helped expose the Trilats. Everything went swimmingly for the forces of truth and justice until shortly before the Republican Convention of 1980, when Reagan suddenly stopped attacking the Trilateral Commission – the name being destined never to surface again. At the Convention, the deal was struck with the Rockefeller forces – symbolized by Reagan's post-convention jaunt to shake the hand of David Rockefeller, and more importantly by Reagan's choice of George Herbert Walker Bush, Trilat, for vice president. That was the moment when knowledgeable observers of the power elite scene knew that the so-called "Reagan Revolution" was already down the drain. From then on, it was all playacting, the only skill at which Reagan has always excelled.

Bush's accession to Total Power of course pleased the Rockefeller World Empire (RWE), but, as usual with the power elite, sentimental loyalty ranks very low on their value scale. As good old George began to slip in the polls during 1991, our old friends the RWE began to look for likely satraps in the Democrat Party. By far the likeliest was and is Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, himself a member of both the CFR and the Trilats. When David Rockefeller heard Clinton address the Bilderbergers (an elite Euro-American group of which David Rockefeller is a member), he pronounced himself satisfied. A Clintonian Democrat Party would be a safe Democrat Party from his point of view. The result: Respectable Media acclaim and the Clinton glide to the nomination.

The result of all this is that the RWE has been neutralized for the 1992 election. Or rather: the RWE is content no matter who wins. The RWE is out of the game.

This leaves us with a determining role played by the second most powerful elite interest group in America: the neoconservatives, who are particularly dominant in the Respectable Media, and in controlling conservative foundation money sources. While the neocons are small in number, the combination of money and media influence will carry you a long, long way. Once staunch Truman-Humphrey-Scoop Jackson Democrats, the neocons left the Democrat Party en masse in the middle of the Carter administration and moved rightward to the Republican Party and to take over the conservative movement and dominate the Reagan coalition. As once and present right-wing Social Democrats, the neocons domestically are in favor of an "efficient" welfare state. They favor expanding the welfare state and domestic statism, but while furnishing "supply side" incentives to the rich through cuts in upper-income tax rates and capital gains taxes. They are also Keynesian inflationists seeking world economic government. They favor civil "rights" laws, but balk at some of the extreme forms of affirmative action and feminism.

But what animates the neocons first and foremost is foreign policy. The dominant and constant star of that foreign policy is the preservation and the aggrandizement, over all other considerations, of the State of Israel, the "little democracy in the Middle East." Consequently, they favor massive foreign aid, especially to the State of Israel, and America as the dominant force in a New World Order that will combat "aggression" everywhere and impose "democracy" throughout the world, the clue to that "democracy" being not so much voting and free elections as stamping out "human rights violations" throughout the globe, particularly any expression, real or imagined, of anti-Semitism.

It is clear that the RWE and the neocon visions, while motivated by very different principles and goals, are congruent almost all the way. There will inevitably be variant and even clashing nuances in their visions, for example: oil, as against the State of Israel. But tracing the subsequent coalitions or clashes between these two powerful groups will go a long way toward explaining the seeming anomalies, and even much of the "weirdness," in recent American political history.

So here we are in 1992. The Rockefeller World Empire couldn't care less, either Bush or Clinton would be fine. And that leaves the neocons, who have been engaged in a massive shift from Bush to Clinton. And if we remember the venal opportunism of the Official Conservative organizations, we must now consider the large contributors, the personal solicitations, where the Four Sisters, the conservative foundations (Olin, Scaife, Bradley, Smith-Richardson) hold all the cards. And these foundations are controlled by their staff, their executive directors, who for a number of years have all been neocon disciples of godfather Irving Kristol. So there we have the final missing term in our political equation. Access and direct mail argue for Clinton; and the neocons have swung massively to Clinton, some outright, others with scarcely camouflaged hints and nudges. The Wall Street Journal, the major neocon organ, has been all but beating the drums for Clinton, and urging Bush to withdraw; Bill Buckley has urged the dumping of Quayle; Bill Bennett has denounced Bush, etc. The Kristol family cannot of course come out for Clinton, since Crown Prince William K. is the "control" of dimwit Vice President Quayle. Note too that the man whom all these forces want is Jack Kemp, the Number One darling of the neocon forces.

And so we have a massive conservative shift from Bush to Clinton guided by corruption and venality, as well as by the ideological special interests of the neoconservatives. During the Carter years, the neocon concern with Israel was backed by an equally fervent anti-Stalinism and hawkishness on the Cold War, a hawkishness connected to Israeli concerns. The anti-Stalinism fooled the conservative movement into embracing neocons as ideological blood-brothers. But now that the Cold War is gone, Israel becomes the consideration, without the anti-Communist veneer, and yet the rest of the conservative movement does not seem to have caught on. Just as the neocon shift to the Republicans in late 1978 was primarily motivated by the increasing bad blood between Carter and Israel, so their shift from Bush to Clinton is motivated almost exclusively by Bush's opposition to Shamir and the Likud and his blocking of the $10 billion loan guarantee to Israel that the neocons had come to regard as Israel's by divine right.

And so there we have it: the who and why of the remarkable and otherwise incomprehensible massive shift of conservatism to the arms of a Democratic liberalism that they once abhorred. It used to be said that knowing economics won't keep you out of the breadline, but at least you'll know why you're there. Knowing the real story of the conservative mugging of President Bush may not stop the Clinton juggernaut, but at least our readers will know why it's happening.