I find it interesting to look back and see the range of positions taken by previous Republican presidents who may nowadays be assumed to be conservative.
In the 1932 election, FDR’s VP running mate accused Herbert Hoover of being a big government socialist. And apparently that resonated with some voters (which considering how FDR governed must have indicated either cognitive dissonance or a general adherence to socialism across the board).
Eisenhower was certainly a good president who was similar in tone to Ronald Reagan, but some of his philosophy was clearly centrist and not conservative.
Calvin Coolidge had more sound conservative credentials but he was a social liberal on some fronts (probably ones that would attract mostly support from conservatives today but certainly did not back then).
Nixon had the reputation among the left of being an ultra-conservative for his earlier anti-communism, but there again he was quite happy to open up relations with Red China and was centrist in some of his views.
Personally, I think “conservative” is a label that has split into two camps since the downfall of the Soviet Union. One camp is nationalist and somewhat isolationist, Trump clearly has settled among that camp (and it’s well known that he wasn’t with that camp in fairly recent times but people do see the light sometimes). The other camp is more concerned with libertarian issues and may or may not be socially conservative, but in some cases may also be hawkish on foreign policy, in particular Israel. Trump appeals to some in that group too, but probably Ted Cruz was more their flavor.
The division in conservatism can be overcome. Conservatism can be thought of as the application of logic and truth to politics. We want to keep that which worked in the past and is likely to work in the future. But we are, or should not be, stupid enough to cling to ideas that aren’t working and won’t work in the future. That we leave to our progressive opponents (climate change and gender ambiguity being two obvious examples). This is why the conservative movement has moved on from its former opposition to women’s rights and earlier opposition to race equality, although we retain a healthy skepticism that legislation alone can create the equality of different cultural groups.
Donald Trump is more of a pragmatist than a conservative perhaps, but he resonates with the conservative desire to see special interest groups reined in, the constitution respected and America not pushed around or humiliated (from within especially) on the world stage.
Borders matter — but this should not be a right/left issue anyway, a border is a border, either you enforce it or you abandon it. Allowing it to become porous like Swiss cheese is just a slow-motion abandoning, destined to dissolve the nation into the mess that surrounds it.
Nixon had the reputation among the left of being an ultra-conservative for his earlier anti-communism, but there again he was quite happy to open up relations with Red China and was centrist in some of his views.
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When Nixon dreamed up and proposed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), was he “centrist”?
Proposed by Nixon, signed into law by Ford and increased under every administration since, no exceptions.
All his so-called conservatism went into the dumper when he created things like the EPA and the RICO laws.
IMHO, ultimately, through just these 2 things, he did more to finish off what remained of the former Republic than things done by GA-boy and AR-boy.