The thing about Trumpism that Brooks and his I'll ilk don't understand is that Trump is the Republican that rank and file Republicans have been waiting for since at least Nixon. It's never been about policy. If it was about policy they would all have been voting Democrat. It is now and always has been about race. Full stop. The Brookses and frums and Stephenses of the world are the ones who don't get it, not the average voter. NYT tries so hard to offer a conservative perspective, but they don't realize that there really is only one single conservative perspective and that's aggrievemet and racialism.
Republicans love to point at Goldwater without acknowledging that he was a fucking racist whose platform was adamantly opposed to civil rights legislation and that what gained them the South was LBJ arguing that blacks are people, too. I know some people (goobster) like to believe there was an era of principled Republican behavior but it's the exception, not the norm. Republicans have hated poor people since Harding.