A couple of themes have been prominent in the pro-Trump pushback against our issue:

Who are you to tell us what to think? Well, we’re an opinion magazine. People are free to agree or disagree, admire us or detest us. If people find that uncongenial, there are all sorts of place they can move in the world where they won’t be disturbed by robust argument about politics.

Won’t your criticism just help Trump? It’s possible. But we aren’t a super PAC or a political campaign. Our role is to call it as we see it, and let the chips fall where they may. It has happened before that candidates we opposed won the Republican nomination (see Bob Dole in 1996 or John McCain in 2008), and it may well happen again this year.

You are the dastardly establishment. If Brent Bozell, Dana Loesch, Katie Pavlich and Erick Erickson are the establishment, the world really has been turned upside down. In reality, elements of the Republican establishment are currently negotiating the terms of their surrender to Trump before a vote has been cast, in an astonishing display of fecklessness.