The conservative intelligentsia’s failed assault on Donald Trump during the GOP primaries was, in my view, the most interesting and perhaps the most important moment of the entire 2016 election cycle. Convinced that Trump threatened conservatism and the Republican Party, most of the notable figures of the conservative movement uniformly declared that Trump was not fit to be the Republican nominee. This struggle crested in an entire issue of National Review dedicated to denouncing Trump.
Throughout most of 2015, leading conservative pundits and intellectuals were confident that Trump was a brief sideshow, one that would ultimately become nothing more than a curious historical footnote. Secure in the knowledge that a critical mass of Republican primary voters are “true conservatives,” most of the Beltway right was confident that, once the primaries and caucuses were underway, the Republican Party in the electorate would recognize Trump’s flaws and settle on a more conventional candidate.
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