Forfeiting the ideals of Never Trump, National Review is starting to embrace, slowly and awkwardly, the Republican president out of fealty to the party. This was perhaps an inevitable development. The magazine was born in 1955 as a revolt against the moderate Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower. When the conservative movement inspired by National Review took over the GOP, the magazine became intimately linked with the party, and started having trouble criticizing Republican administrations. As John Judis showed in his biography of William F. Buckley, the National Review founder began to forgive conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan who strayed from right-wing orthodoxy in order to win elections. The balancing act Buckley learned to perform, of being both a supporter of the party and a keeper of ideological purity, tilted increasingly in the direction of partisanship.
From: National Review’s Sad Surrender to Trump | New Republic
