Paul Ryan is literally jumping off a sinking ship. He announced retirement long time before the Republicans got crushed out of the House because he knew it was coming. I expect we'll see him attempt to become one of those "Enlightened Centritsts"
It seems this neocon infiltration of the "enlightened centrists" camp has become a trend since they lost all credibility in the 2000s. I'd like to believe people will see through this rebranding and know better than to believe a word they say or trust their intentions, but knowing the short memory people have, that probably won't be the case.
it's all part of a broader effort to shift the overton window to the right
when mainline republican means fascist and 'rational centrist' means 'republican from 1992'
dems can benefit from this if enough ballot initiatives rip the power to draw districts from GOP state legislatures though
It's far more nuanced than "they're plotting to make America more conservative." The overton window has seen significant expansion to the left since 2004, and in the social realm the right has slowly followed suit, albeit with some skepticism here or there.
There has been a multifaceted civil war in the American right since the 1990s. Currently, the most visible conflict is between the Paleocons and the Neocons. The former: isolationist, protectionist, bottom-up/localist in political matters. The latter: interventionists/warhawks, globalist, top-down in political matters.
When the neocons lost credibility due to getting America stuck in expensive and pointless foreign conflicts, they began to posture themselves as libertarian due to their advocacy of free trade, their opposition to protectionism/localism allowing them to posture themselves as more cosmopolitan than Paleocons. With this framing, they could masquerade as moderates, and as insurgents against Trump, whose rise to power was fueled by Paleocons.
Neocons are little different from establishment Democrats - they just prefer freer markets, less taxes, and they formally declared their pointless wars rather than conducting operations without congressional authorization, as Obama did (particularly in Libya, Syria, and Pakistan).
Fact of the matter is, both parties have had fascist tendencies for decades. The doctrine of Fascist Corporatism is the de facto doctrine of American politics as it relates to economic intervention; the parties just favor different industries.
The popular reaction to this zeitgeist has most notably occurred in the form of the anarchistic Occupy movement on the left, and more recently the Paleocon revolt on the right. I'd argue the Tea Party was also a reaction to this, but being dominated by self-interested boomers, its heart wasn't in the right place and it was doomed to fail.
The Paleocon revolt was most visible in their rallying behind Trump, but since Bannon's departure from the administration, its political manifestation has slowly crumbled as Trump - due to sheer political incompetence or otherwise - has shifted to a more "establishment" mode of operation, inviting Neocons into his cabinet and making certain geopolitical moves that reflect that camp's standard operating procedure - most notably maintaining a cozy relationship with the KSA.
All the Democrats really need to do to win is to let Trump continue to alienate his base, and run a candidate that isn't a Marxist, refuses to suck up to Saudi Arabia or support its cold war against Shias, gives lip service to putting power back in the hands of local communities, and doesn't pander solely to urban coastal interests.