In the halcyon days of 2016, when something like the conventional and pundit-sanctioned laws of politics still seemed to apply, the official gatekeepers of American conservatism mounted a multipronged strategy designed to neutralize Donald Trump. In a trial run of the tactic that would so badly fail Hillary Clinton that November, some fixated on his indecency and inexperience.

“Both parties have been infested by candidates who have treated the presidency as an entry-level position,” bleated a January editorial in the National Review. “The burdens and intricacies of leadership are special; experience in other fields is not transferable.” Elsewhere, the same tract attempted to situate Trump as an unreliable tribune of conservatism, darkly intoning that his past comments on abortion, gun control, health care policy, and “punitive taxes on the wealthy” suggested “he and Bernie Sanders . . . shared more than funky outer-borough accents.”

In light of what happened next, these lines of attack now feel quaint. Having strong-armed his way past a cadre of donor-vetted suits like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush en route to the presidency, Trump quickly made his bizarre demagogic style the lingua franca of the American right. For reasons of ideology, opportunism, or some combination of both, many erstwhile opponents obligingly hopped aboard the Trump train, leaving the handful who maintained a critical posture firmly on the margins of Republican politics. Appeals to decency, honor, and Trump’s unreliable conservative bona fides fell on deaf ears.