As usual, the comments under Nevertrump articles are more honest and intelligent than the articles

Kent Lyon 

Ormond Beach, Florida

"What makes that crisis acute is the knowledge that he and his predecessors may have helped to bring it on themselves." Unfortunately, Mr. Continetti far over reaches. There is no evidence of any soul searching on the part of the conservative intellectual. He or she evinces no awareness of any role in bringing about the current crisis. The conservative intellectual is entirely myopic, appears to feel no responsibility at all for the current crisis, and is content to simply bash Trump supporters, viewing them exactly as does Hillary Clinton--as deplorables, despicable ignorant scum, against whom the conservative intellectual spouts vituperation reeking of disdain. The vile Charles Murray for example, evinces some sympathy for the denizens of Fishtown from a sterile statistical academic perspective, but the minute those denizens chose a flesh and blood candidate in Trump, he goes ballistic to the point of meltdown over the audacity of those denizens in challenging the order that they are suffering under. The conservative intellectual has lost all contact with the supposed beneficiaries of conservative ideas and policies. And the conservative intellectual views the hoi poloi with the same disdain as the Democratic Party elite, as voting fodder to be manipulated and bamboozled for the benefit of incumbency, nothing more, nothing less. Just as Buckley bragged to the end of jis life about helping Goldwater distance himself from thse deplorable Birchers (aka Goldwater's conservative populist base--evey businessman in Phoenix was a card carrying Birtcher in those days). so we have his successors bashing Trump, and by extension his supporters, in sotto voce and voz alta, helping to ensure that Trump loses in a lanslide like Goldwater did. Plus ca change...
The reason Reagan won where Goldwater did not, is that Reagan didn't alienate that deplorable base; he welcomed it. When pressed by the elites he simply replied: Just becuase they support me doesn't mean that I support them, and left it at that.
And by the way, Reagan didn't just espouse a nationalist/populaist position in the panama Canal debate--he singlehandedly handed Buckley and the pro intellectuals their heads on platters: He decimated them with vastly superior information and insight.'Reagan made Buckely look like an ignorant, effete fool.
NR's infatuation with Burke blinds it to about everything. Burke was a Royalist who opposed human freedom and the American Revolution. NR finds itself in the role of George III objecting to a declaration of independence by the hoi poloi, from the arrogant royalists that consider themselves conservative intellectuals and their duplicitous and disdainful political masters in the Republican establishment.