Well you got a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Christian cult leader in 2012, so maybe you are right, but we conservatives are trying to fix that and make sure that we eliminate the corrosive penetration by the hard left agenda into conservative ranks.
Conservative still means what it used to, but there is a real effort to eliminate it’s meaning, by making it mean nothing and everything, which is what you are doing with your ridiculous list of contradictions and narrow categories.
“...by making it mean nothing and everything, which is what you are doing with your ridiculous list of contradictions and narrow categories.”
Kind of like America, huh? At its core, I would say that conservatives are individuals, and build from there. You cannot find a single issue in which we *all* agree; but we are not going to exclude those from conservatism who are not in lockstep with us.
If you want to define us by our political enemies, feel free, but that has no purpose or goal other than a static defense against their ideas. You embrace the old, leftist idea that the opposite of progressivism is to be reactionary. That the opposite of a communist is a Nazi. But that is a patently false idea.
The opposite of radicalism is real moderation, the opposite of bad radical change is a return to efficiency and common sense, not nostalgia for a “golden age” that never existed. The bad idea is confronted with a good idea, with the idea that the good idea will trump the bad idea in the marketplace of ideas.
The founding fathers were well aware that attempts are made to corrupt written laws before the ink is dried, so the way around this is to have different groups with different priorities acting in balance with each other. The constitution is full of such balances, and so is conservatism.
Look at FR! How many “lockstep” and uniform conservatives do you find here? For the most part, they will politely argue every aspect and element of conservatism, within some limits of decorum. Compare that to leftist forums where the politically correct is sacrosanct, and those who violate their rigid belief structure are instantly expelled.
Theirs is not the way of strength, but of terrible weakness, for they are afraid of new ideas. Yes, they are unified, from their lowest member, at the state and local level, through congress, and all the way to the POTUS, but only because they are so brittle that even a slight nudge will collapse their agenda.
The religion, the faith, of leftists is an idol with clay feet. Conservatism is made of much stronger stuff.