E. J. Dionne speculates that anti-Trump conservatives could follow the pattern of an earlier “intellectual rebellion,” that of the liberals who turned into neoconservatives in response to the excesses of the Left. Citing Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin, David Frum, Charlie Sykes, and Evan McMullin, he says that “a large cadre” of anti-Trump conservatives may establish their own political identity as “neo-moderates.”

I think what Dionne is actually seeing are four real phenomena that combine to give him a misleading impression. Because I’m going to get into questions of taxonomy in what follows, let me make a stipulation about terms at the outset: I’m going to use the label “anti-Trump conservatives” to describe people who are anywhere to the right of center and often criticize the president.

First: Because these Trump-criticizing conservatives come in several varieties—that’s one of the reasons they failed in the primaries—some of them are less conservative than most Republicans. Most anti-Trump and Trump-skeptical conservatives applauded the president’s decision to leave the Paris climate-change accord, for example, but a few of them opposed that decision. They stand out more than the more numerous anti-Trumpers who are glad we have left Paris.

Second: These moderate-right anti-Trumpers have particular criticisms of Trump that are not shared by anti-Trumpers further to their right, but the moderates often link their particular criticisms to broader criticisms that both groups share. Anti-Trump conservatives on both sides of the Paris question think that Trump is cavalier about our alliances, for example, but only the pro-accord side thinks the decision to leave it is a telling example of that tendency. Anti-Trump, pro-leaving conservatives would give you a more complicated story: Yes, the president is insufficiently committed to our alliances, but this decision was justified; and in fact it would be going over better if he had demonstrated a firmer commitment to NATO. When Eliot Cohen and Mitt Romney say (wrongly in my view) that we should have stayed in the accord to keep exercising global leadership, it is easy for an observer to conclude that this sentiment typifies the conservative opposition to Trump—even though it doesn’t.

Third: It is likely that some moderate-right anti-Trumpers are in fact moving left on some issues in response to Trump. I don’t think that’s true of many people in the broad anti-Trump right. It’s not true of Jonah Goldberg or Erick Erickson or Sen. Ben Sasse. But it is true enough to give people, again, a misleading impression.

Fourth: The moderate-right anti-Trumpers will naturally seem more authentically anti-Trump, especially to liberals, than the more conservative ones. Because Trump has adopted many conservative policies, the latter will naturally cheer him on many occasions. They can do that without abandoning their disagreements with Trump on some important issues or their concerns about his character. But to liberals, expressions of support for particular Trump moves will seem like dilutions of the purity of the anti-Trump position. And so when liberals think about what Trump-critical conservatives are like, they will think of the moderate conservatives rather than the conservative conservatives.

What Dionne is talking about, then, is a small faction of a faction within the Right, and one that is not new, but one that because of today’s circumstances looks larger and newer than it is.