How to Use neoconservative in a Sentence

neoconservative

noun
  • Then again, without Carter as the nominee, the neoconservatives who broke away from the Democrats might have stayed in the fold.
    — Ben Jacobs, The New Republic, 21 Sep. 2023
  • Critics will sniff that this shows his own lack of imagination, or the influence of neoconservatives.
    — Timothy Stanley, CNN, 23 May 2017
  • The only missing ingredient to make the platform neoconservative was building a large military and a lower threshold for using it.
    — Shay Khatiri, The Week, 26 Mar. 2022
  • When the neoconservatives came on the scene in the late 1960s, the Republican old guard viewed them as interlopers.
    — Jacob Heilbrunn, The New Republic, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Senor and Stephens are neoconservatives who hardly needed to be convinced that the members of progressive movements were not friends of the Jewish people.
    — Eyal Press, New Yorker, 30 Mar. 2026
  • Irving Kristol famously said a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.
    — Rich Lowry, National Review, 28 May 2021
  • The theory was adopted by many neoconservatives at the time, but many other scholars and specialists viewed the claims as exaggerated or dubious.
    — Adam Bernstein, Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2017
  • With war no longer entirely a hypothetical, neoconservatives portrayed Iraq as a proving ground for their larger mission.
    — Max Fisher, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2023
  • The whole line of attack recalled Irving Kristol’s adage that a neoconservative is simply a liberal who has been mugged by reality.
    — Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, 25 Sep. 2022
  • Trump’s infrastructure spending might please liberals, his defense hike might please neoconservatives, and his tax cuts might please libertarians.
    — William Saletan, Slate Magazine, 26 Apr. 2017
  • Encouraging students to be what mocking neoconservatives call ‘politically correct’ has made our country a far better place.
    — Stephen Metcalf, The New Yorker, 10 Jan. 2017
  • Beginning in the 1970s, some of the writers and editors who became known as neoconservatives observed changes in the American elite.
    — Matthew Continetti, National Review, 10 Aug. 2019
  • Panelists suggested ever more intricate ways to give regional peace a chance, until the neoconservative Michael Ledeen spoke out heretically.
    — Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Bush’s war, on the other hand, enjoyed the support of a grotesque coalition of Democrats, neoconservatives, and the foreign-policy and liberal media establishments.
    — Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024
  • For decades, Republicans aligned roughly around the heavy-handed foreign policy principles of neoconservatives.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 23 Feb. 2023
  • Given how damaging the neoconservatives were to the well-being and security of the American people, this is a very positive development.
    — Connor Okeeffe, Orange County Register, 17 Oct. 2024
  • Only back then, the ideologues and fanatics were neoconservatives bent on invading Iraq and declaring an American Empire.
    — Henry Farrell, Washington Post, 1 Feb. 2018
  • Good ol’ boys, neoconservatives, and liberals all honor democracy, freedom, markets, human rights, and various other abstractions.
    — Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 14 May 2017
  • The party’s Senate leadership, for instance, is dominated by neoconservatives.
    — Andrew Byers, Foreign Affairs, 1 July 2024
  • Contrary to the perspective of both neoconservatives and social-justice advocates, Kleiman understood both crime and mass incarceration as serious problems.
    — Gabriel Rossman, National Review, 23 July 2019
  • Rampell’s writing and commentary do not reflect the views of actual neoconservatives, who champion shrinking the welfare state as well as a robustly interventionist foreign policy.
    — Ron Kampeas, Sun Sentinel, 24 Apr. 2026
  • The party’s traditional establishment is made up of neoconservatives and primacists who want the United States to exercise its power around the world and use its military capabilities to achieve many ends.
    — Andrew Byers, Foreign Affairs, 1 July 2024
  • Neoconservatives applauded Reagan’s critique of the Nixon/Kissinger policy of detente (an easing of hostilities).
    — James Goldgeier, Washington Post, 17 July 2017
  • The foreign policy adventures of the neoconservatives and liberal internationalists haven’t fared much better than economic policy or cultural politics.
    — Ganesh Sitaraman, The New Republic, 23 Dec. 2019
  • The kinds of Republicans most likely to find Trump repulsive include neoconservatives, immigration doves, women, and institutionalists.
    — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 17 Oct. 2017
  • Against the neoconservatives, conservatives must oppose imperial adventures and protect the principle of national independence.
    — Alexis Carré, National Review, 18 Feb. 2020
  • Remarkably, the one issue that once unified evangelicals, neoconservatives, and grassroots Republicans—unwavering support for Israel—is now fracturing.
    — Faisal Kutty, MSNBC Newsweek, 27 Aug. 2025
  • Moreover, during the Iraq war, the Jewish community could effectively argue that framing the conflict as a Jewish neocon conspiracy was baseless, even as some neoconservatives influenced policy.
    — Andrew Silow-Carroll, Sun Sentinel, 9 Mar. 2026
  • The neoconservatives and liberal internationalists who staffed previous administrations were sidelined.
    — Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 17 Dec. 2018
  • In the past two weeks, prominent neoconservatives Bret Stephens and Elliott Abrams have argued in favor of overthrowing Maduro outright in columns in the New York Times and Foreign Affairs.
    — Max Saltman, CNN Money, 22 Nov. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'neoconservative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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