Married white Christians were the demographic core of the country when National Review was founded, and still are the demographic core of the conservative movement it midwifed. The difference in verb tenses between the two halves of that sentence is a problem for that movement, and points to one for the country.

The last 60 years have witnessed a “great sorting” of parties and voters in the United States, a sorting this magazine has promoted. Partisan divisions have come more closely to coincide with ideological ones. Americans got “a choice, not an echo,” as conservatives promised during one of NR’s early …