The performative outrage from professional conservatives over my column last week, which argued that the conservative movement has largely failed and we should stop calling ourselves conservatives, was as revealing as it was predictable.
Bill Kristol called me a fascist. John Podhoretz said I’m a power-hungry fanatic. David French warned I was fabricating an existential threat to the American idea. Matt Lewis, perhaps the most candid of the lot, was just happy that “far-right extremists” like me will no longer besmirch the good name of conservatism, which he’d like to keep for himself.
There are two things happening here. The first
