What is "mainstream conservative thought" to you, may I ask? From where I sit, the Republican party (often called "conservative") is divided into several facti

What is "mainstream conservative thought" to you, may I ask? From where I sit, the Republican party (often called "conservative") is divided into several factions right now. The think-tank side traditionally caters to three of them: neo-conservative / "law and order" type causes, libertarian causes, or business interests. The Republican party also is the home of both a religious / fundamentalist wing, and a cultural-identity / white nationalist wing; these sides are generally not well represented in the think tanks. Maybe the later two are what you consider "mainstream"? The issue with the later two camps is that the representative media can be very populist in nature. And populism can be very us-vs-them / emotion driven, sometimes with disregard for facts. This probably would not fit well at all with the current editorial stance of the Times, even if the populism comes from the left.