The label, "neocon," is rarely used with any precision anymore. It has become a generic epithet.
It seems to often mean "someone who supported intervention in Iraq, who I don't like".
But sometimes it has even less precision that that, something like, "someone who I don't like who supports Republicans and/or is against Democrats on issue X", with issue X, being whatever the current conversation is about.
Neocons are characterized by interventionism overseas and relative (for a conservative) statism.
Also the term, at least in its original usage, meant someone who used to be liberal, or further to the left (leftist, socialist, perhaps communist) and then became conservative, typically with (as you point out) a higher then normal degree of support for foreign intervention, and a higher then normal (for a Republican or conservative) degree of support for the welfare state. |
