The misguided prophets of a new conservatism: Why right-wing intellectuals struggle to make sense of Trump

If you're like most people, you haven't followed the twists and turns of conservative intellectual efforts to gin up a new account of American conservatism distinguishing it from Trumpism. The Reagan coalition united economic conservatives focused on "smaller government"—i.e., lower taxes and regulations—and religious conservatives intent on preserving traditional morality, which boiled down mostly to sex they don't like. Even before Trump, the so-called "Reformicons," a circle of conservative intellectuals centered around National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru and National Affairs's Yuval Levin, argued that conservative economic policies should be reoriented away from the Reagan-era catechism and toward support of the working class—in particular, toward a set of policies aiming to strengthen the economic position of ordinary families and to restore social mobility. Next came "Common Good Conservatism," even less likely to appeal to Trump's GOP. It's hard to count intellectuals out entirely; the movement will continue to maintain the "ideas infrastructure" if, for nothing else, to support useful apparatchiks.