I would like to think some of these Republican apparatchicks heading for the right wing exit are leaving out of guilt or shame or at least the desire to do less harm. In the case of someone like Warner, that may be true, but the idea men are looking for a place to retrench. DeMuth and Rove will be back, and until then will lurk like rats in the walls of corporate America, looking for a weak place to gnaw into. The basic problem with modern conservative ideology is it emphasizes marketing over substance. This is usually called the Reagan Legacy, but he was all package and no product. People like Kristol and DeMuth and their mouthpiece stooges like Limbaugh and O'Reilly are the modern snake oil salesmen and more proud of their ability to convince people that less is more than of any real accomplishment. That has been the problem with the Bush/Republican Congress era. They never thought they had to really do anything except convince people they were right. Whether they were right or not did not matter. They thought that "facts are stupid things" and easily manipulated through a pliable mass media. So they have failed, over and over and over until even the worst of them realizes it is time for a time out, like a celebrity entering rehab. Except of course for Larry Craig.

The basic problem with modern conservative ideology is it emphasizes marketing over substance.

I think this is true to an extent. But I think to really understand the neoconservative mindset, we have to understand that they think the "substance" you might be referring to are at a level of detail that is insignificant.

Here's an example: The question of whether Iraq had WMD's seems significant to most of us, but not to a neoconservative. They have done a completely intellectual analysis and determined that it is in our country's interest to expand our power in the Middle East. They see this as a greater "noble" truth than whether there really was a threat. A lot of this intellectual analysis is based on what some think is a misinterpretation of Leo Strauss' philosophical work (Link, Link).

This may be a distinction that is actually scarier than the more cynical view that neoconservatives are lying for money or personal power. They are lying because they think they have knowledge and understanding that others will never have, and the pursuit of these "noble truths" necessitates spin and marketing.