“but, since it does not indicate another direction”
Hayek was talking about something other than what is today known as conservatism.
We have a direction. We know which way to go.
We have not yet been able to make it happen. Not since Ronaldus Magnus.
Does it really take a genius to explain common sense to the denizens of the vast wasteland?
Are you perhaps conflating “conservative” with “constitutionalist”?
“Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments.”
Does this not describe the Republican party?