But it is the most significant criticism. It is coming from a unique institution and has already had institutional consequences. The National Review’s publisher, Jack Fowler, announced Thursday night that the RNC has disinvited the magazine from participating in an upcoming debate that it was to moderate in partnership with CNN.

That said, the anti-Trump message didn’t just coming from NR editors. The issue includes contributions from 22 right-leaning intellectuals. The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol and the Cato Institute’s David Boaz don’t have much in common. Neither do Commentary’s John Podhoretz and Glenn Beck. But all are anti-Trump.

If Trump should go on to win the Republican nomination––here’s Noah Millman’s case that he’s “poised for the strongest primary performance in modern history,” and Ross Douthat’s case that he is going to lose in the end––National Review and a number of the contributors to its symposium will be alienated from the GOP’s standard bearer, and perhaps from the Republican Party as a whole, as never before.

Would the GOP be forever changed? Matthew Continetti argues that the effect Trump’s nomination would have on its composition and philosophy would be profound. “Republican nominees since Ronald Reagan have been internationalist in outlook,” he writes. “They have been pro-free trade and pro-immigration, have supported American leadership in global institutions, and have argued for market solutions and traditional values. A Republican Party under Donald Trump would broadly reject this attitude. It would emphasize protection in all its forms—immigration restriction, trade duties, a fortress America approach to international relations, and activist government to address health care and veterans’ care. Paeans to freedom and opportunity and equality and small government would give way to admonishments to strive, to fight, to win, to profit.”

At Reason, Matt Welch was less certain of what this symposium or Trump’s popularity mean. “Many or even most of the people who make a living working in politics and political commentary—even those who think of themselves as outsiders, such as nonpartisan libertarians—inevitably begin to view their field as one dedicated primarily to ideas, ideology, philosophy, policy, and so forth,” he wrote, “and NOT to the emotional, ideologically unmoored cultural passions of a given (and perhaps fleeting) moment. Trump—and more importantly, his supporters, who go all but unmentioned here—illustrate that that gap is, well, yuuge.”

It is certainly the case that Trump and his unexpected support confound the ideological categories that the press has long used to make sense of American politics. But the fact that so many prominent conservatives and libertarians who disagree about so much all believe that Trump is worth fighting strikes me as a promising sign for those who want him to be defeated. Until now, the conservative movement hasn’t quite dared to believe that Trump could actually win.