Behold the intellectual bankruptcy of the conservative movement: Even the highly responsible, intellectual Never Trump conservatives have built their new website not around a coherent set of ideas but around their desire to destroy their enemies. I thought their critics were exaggerating, but that actually seems to be their own articulation of their mission. (Update: Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes are passing on the link and discussing the article without challenging it, so that confirms the article’s depiction of their vindictive motives is accurate.)

Predictably, they are already going after not just the grifters, but a lot of people who don’t deserve to be gone after. That is how movements motivated by resentment work.

Seth Mandel, a Never Trump conservative who is the editor of the new magazine that was created via the destruction of the Weekly Standard, sums it up: “Imagine thinking Hank Olsen is the villain.”

Full disclosure: Olsen is a friend. More full disclosure: If it takes a friend of Olsen’s to tell you that Olsen is not the problem, you are as small-minded as Trump’s supporters and you are not fighting for ideas or moral virtues. You, also, are grifting.

I cannot wish success for the magazine built out of the bones of the murdered Weekly Standard, nor for a website built out of pure spite by its refugees.

I’ve written a bunch of posts under variations on the title “Death of Conservatism Watch.” I think the watch is over.