From a reader, speaking for many, including John Miller below:

I think this deserves special mention [from the NYT]:
“the magazine may have lost something else: its reputation as the . . . home for erudite and well-mannered debate”
Any guesses as to how often the Times has recognized NR as “the home for erudite and well-mannered debate”? As always with the Times, they honor and respect the old [i.e., now-deceased] conservatives; it’s the new conservatives, the ones actually working in the present, that they can’t stand.

Me: The tendency of liberals to heap praise on dead conservatives (or former conservatives) as a means to condemn actual, living, conservatives is a familiar one. But I believe Ramesh and I wrote the only sustained piece on the phenomenon in National Review. I do hope it was erudite enough.