"Despite what all the best and the brightest assured us was inevitable, the Republican party is in its strongest electoral position since the presidency of Herbert Hoover. It enjoys majorities in both houses of Congress, and commands a large majority of the state legislative houses and governorships. Conservatives have won important debates and political victories on everything from taxation to free speech to foreign policy. Those conservatives who complain that the Right hasn't accomplished very much forget where the country was in 1955 when National Review was founded and central planning was assumed by all the right people to be the model of the future, or where the country's domestic policies stood in 1980 or its national-security policies in 2000. ...

"[R]egardless of what happens on Election Day 2016, we will wake up in a world in which property rights need to be secured, free trade protected and expanded, government limited, the rule of law honored, children reared, citizenship cultivated, and enemies defeated. These are among what Russell Kirk called 'the permanent things,' and the defense of them, which we call 'conservatism,' is the permanent burden of free people. That isn't going anywhere."