Three leading lights of national conservatism — Sohrab Ahmari, Patrick Deneen, and Gladden Pappin — came together to write a New York Times op-ed (recently discussed by my colleague Damon Linker) arguing that hawks are a major impediment to a better Republican Party. This was also a major theme of the libertarian moment that preceded the right’s current nationalist-populist one.

But many of the newfangled conservatives of the Trump era consciously reject classical and procedural liberalism, much less libertarianism. Sensing the natcons’ desire to cast them out of the big tent, libertarians are quick to return the favor. J.D. Vance and Justin Amash may agree about the Iraq war, but they have radically different views about libertarianism. And only one of them remains a member of the Republican Party.

Another part of this dilemma is that populists have gotten further in Republican politics, at least for now, than libertarians ever have. But libertarians have been much more consistent on foreign policy, making hawks eager to co-opt the newest incarnation of the right. The non-Never Trump neocon migration to national conservatism was entirely predictable.