Conservatives had long dreamed of a day when liberalism could become a term of derision. William Buckley, the “patron saint” of conservatives, certainly beamed in 1988. When he began the National Review back in 1955, at the ripe age of 30, Buckley had fixed his magazine’s sights on liberalism, attacking it for being too permissive, too secular, too meddling in the economy, and too soft on communism.