The well-known tensions at the heart of the conservative movement, between social and economic conservatives, between foreign policy hawks and realists, and so on, made it easy for someone like Trump, who had absolutely no interest in the rival factions’ internecine warfare and instead could appeal straight to the gut of a relative majority of the party’s working-class base, to, like a toddler, grab the strange object, shake it like a rattle, and then shatter it by throwing it to the floor.

This isn’t the first time the GOP, like any political party, has encountered a setback, of course. But it is certainly the first time that it, or really any other party in recent memory, has ended up nominating a presidential candidate who happens to be so obviously unsuited to the office which he seeks, so obviously doomed in a general election campaign, and so at odds with what the party itself claims to stands for. Even Barry Goldwater, who lost in a landslide in 1964, only ticked one of those three boxes. Walter Mondale lost in a landslide, but as a former vice president, he was a consummate insider, not the total outsider that Trump is.

What is conservatism all about? White identity politics? Boosting corporate profits? I would argue it’s about a certain view of human flourishing informed by millennia of learning by trial and error. These lessons have produced some of the most profound political, and even spiritual, traditions in history. Other people will have different views.