Kevin Williamson runs against conservative orthodoxy with this piece in National Review. But also against the magazine's history of anti-Establishment and Eisenhower criticism. (thread) https://www.nationalreview.com/the-tuesday/the-end-of-the-gop/

Williamson spends a lot time unpacking NR, radical conservatism and William F. Buckley (and his move to the center). But he doesn't emphasize just how much conservatism began as anti-Eisenhower, anti-Modern Republicanism.

When NR was founded in 1955, its senior editors seriously considered endorsing California's conservative Senator Bill Knowland (later disgraced) as their preferred presidential candidate.

The magazine didn't endorse Eisenhower, instead offering a point/counterpoint discussion of the merits of a Republican liberal.

The lesser of two evils versus defeat the liberals within the Republican party in order to bring conservatism to power. Buckley chimed in with a classic "I prefer Ike."

NR's readership had varied views. Some supported the above reasoning, some the segregationist States Rights' Candidate,...

Hardline libertarian Murray Rothbard sketched an alternative voting system to deprive politicians of political mandates, and racist anti-Semite impresario Willis Carto hoped to break the parties along ideological lines.

As I say, Williamson cuts against not only what conservative audiences want to hear, but the deep currents of the conservative movement itself, even in his former home institution.

Oh, I meant to add that National Review's first full-time publisher, Bill Rusher, was radicalized by his sense of betrayal by Eisenhower.