The American conservative movement, which first coalesced in its modern form after World War II, has long been an uneasy coalition of snobs and slobs, of wannabe aristocrats and intellectuals like the late William F. Buckley and Norman Podhoretz joining forces with such avatars of plebeian rage as Joseph McCarthy and Sarah Palin, respectively. Yet this fusion of pretend-gentry with pseudo-populism has always been a shaky one, with the more respectable faces of the right occasionally having to distance themselves from their uncouth cousins. Buckley’s magazine, National Review, has constantly tried to define a respectable conservatism that excludes lurid conspiracy theorists as well as the more overt manifestations of anti-Semitism and racism. It has assumed the role of gatekeeper—the gate of an exclusive country club, that is—deciding who counts as worthy of entry and who has to be locked out.

But National Review’s undeniable influence on conservatism has been waning, and its latest attempt to act as the right wing’s bouncer has backfired. The controversy, as it always seems to be on the right today, concerns Donald Trump’s role in the GOP. On the magazine’s website, Jonah Goldberg published an epistolary article whose title says it all: "No Movement That Embraces Trump Can Call Itself Conservative.” “Dear Reader (if there are any of you left),” Goldberg begins, rather forlornly, “Well, if this is the conservative movement now, I guess you’re going to have to count me out.”

In response to Goldberg’s attack, Trump’s right-wing fans, some of whom are avowed white nationalists, pushed the hashtag #NRORevolt, which became a hub for those rejecting National Review’s status as the arbiter of who counts as respectable right-winger. Just a few tweets are sufficient to see the level of intellectual argument involved:

These poor people thinking the jewish neocohen is on their side. Hope they wake up #NRORevolt http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423607/donald-trump-conservative-movement-jonah-goldberg#comment-2237525121 ... pic.twitter.com/DzMVCD4E1M — ricky_vaughn99

@NRO I guess he didn't suck Israel's cock hard enough for you NRO fags. Why didn't he cup the balls? #NRORevolt #Cuckservative — tharightstuff

Between adopting niglets, loving mestizos and securing Israel's borders, the #cuckservative has no time for his own white race. #NRORevolt — darklyenlighten

Those pushing the #NRORevolt hashtag are clearly a gruesome lot, and if National Review has helped keep a lid on such unwholesome cretins, we can be grateful to the magazine. Yet the Review’s role in serving as a rightwing gatekeeper too frequently gets celebrated in uncritical terms. The oft-told story about how National Review expelled anti-Semites and Birchers from the right is much more complicated than the way it is usually rendered. If National Review has purged extremists, it is often after a period of working with them. The magazine has long played a delicate balancing act of gathering together as many on the right as possible and then trying to shake off those who go too far.

Writing in The Atlantic a few years back, historian Garry Wills, a liberal who had a long period of personal estrangement from Buckley, told a familiar story. “By the time of his death, even [Buckley’s] earlier critics admitted that he had done much to make conservatism respectable by purging it of racist and fanatical traits earlier embedded in it. He distanced his followers from the southern prejudices of George Wallace, the anti-Semitism of the Liberty Lobby, the fanaticism of the John Birch Society, the glorification of selfishness by Ayn Rand … [and] the paranoia and conspiratorialism of the neocons.”