First, many, if not most, of the contributors to this screed are not major conservative intellectuals.
Second, have any of the contributors actually produced any advances toward conservative goals? No, these people have accomplished essentially nothing to stop the advance of the progressive agenda. The GOP establishment is composed primarily of liars and crooks, and these contributors have done nothing to change that. That’s why so many people are willing to take a chance on Trump. These contributors offer no effective alternative.
Finally, the very fact that the contributors thought that their screed would be effective in stopping Trump demonstrates that their opinions have little merit. I suspect that the idea to publish such a screed was pushed by the neocons among the contributors.
I can't say that none of the contributors have done anything at all to stop the progressive agenda -- I have certainly thought highly of Sowell's body of work, for one, and Bozell's excellent quantitative tracking of media bias and testimonies before congress and at shareholders' meetings to try to turn back the tide of pornification of our children, and was greatly disappointed to see their names on the list.
But thinking of how a magazine is organized, most were not staff writers but a bunch of contributors from all across the country. They wrote what they wrote and emailed it and probably had little to do with brainstorming the format of the attack. The fault for that lies with the editor Rich Lowry, and I would guess his major staff associates Jonah Goldberg and certainly Brent Bozell, Buckley's nephew, whose piece truly saddened me to think he could stoop so low.