People who say they are "fiscal conservatives" but "socially liberal" have either exercised flawed logic, or have not thought matters completely through. The sanctity of the individual and his/her exercise of liberty has as much to do with the pro-life movement, the right to keep and bear arms and the right to do what the individual sees fit with the fruits of their labor.
Because modern liberalism has attained the power it has through a weak coalition of disparate and often divergent and competing interests, it must often embrace hypocrisy, misrepresent reality and rewrite history in order to survive.
It's this consistency that is, for me, the primary difference between contemporary conservatism and liberalism. Certainly there are some small disagreements within the conservative movement, but they can almost always be viewed as interpretive matters unlike the disagreements in the liberal movement which can frequently border on fractious and be best described as competing interests.
Not fair, you added to the meaning of Conservatism, as many try to redefine it today, by adding the word contemporary, which in itself, adds a new meaning, undefined and unspoken, to conservatism.
What is the difference between conservatism and contemporary conservatism?
This is how people are trying to make republicanism, conservatism.