[knaq]

By definition, a conservative is a slow-motion progressive. Ignoring that technicality, there are 3 types of republican:

1. religious

2. business (likes outsourcing and unlimited immigration to drive down wages)

3. pro-America

They often hate each other. The first two groups are usually unwilling to admit that Trump has been the best president ever.

[giantg2]

Do you have any examples of your hate comment?

Also, do you have an answer to my question about which topics would be different between trump supporting and non-trump supporting conservatives? I know trump supporters who could fit all three of these categories. Not to mention there are probably other categories and people who fit into multiple categories.

[knaq]

The pro-America types want tariffs and less immigration. The business types disagree strongly.

The religious types have had complaints about LGBT. Again, the business types disagree strongly.

So there you have the business types being almost libertarian, fighting against the rest of the party. They won't get tossed out because they bring most of the money.

Sometimes the religious and pro-America types are at odds over immigration. Mormons and Catholics are particularly fond of immigration.

Supporting Trump or not is partly a matter of priority. The business types more concerned with regulations will support Trump. The ones trying to run factories in America will support Trump, but the ones trying to outsource production won't. Mormons see that Trump made the first openly gay appointment (ambassador to Germany) and built over 500 miles of wall, so they aren't too happy despite liking the supreme court appointments.

And yes, there is style. Some people like the smooth-talking political dishonesty that we've had for decades. There is the idea that that is somehow proper. Trump fans hate that stuff.

[dragonwriter]

> By definition, a conservative is a slow-motion progressive

No, they aren’t. A conservative is an anti-progressive. (Classically, an anti-liberal, but that’s less clear these days, because while classical liberalism was a progressive position for its time of origin, “liberal” has been overloaded to refer to defense of the status quo elites established by the success of classical liberalism and continued progress in the direction laid out by classical liberalism, with the latter use sometimes more specifically narrowed to be “at a slower pace than is described by ‘progressivism’”.) The former sense overlaps with conservatism, the latter sense with (possibly specifically slow-motion) progressivism.

> Ignoring that technicality, there are 3 types of republican:

I would say more than that:

1) social conservative (often, but not always, for religious reasons; this group was basically drawn in as a side effect of targeting group #5 with the southern strategy)

2) libertarian (as a distinct faction, really drawn as strategists realized that it was easy to adapt the decentralization and States Rights rhetoric that was classic dogwhistles for group #5 along with a lot of the anti-business-regulatory rhetoric designed to give mass appeal to the interests of group #3 to appeal to this group and reinforce the Republican coalition)

3) corporate neoliberal capitalist (the oldest major faction of the Republican Party, it has been a major factor since very close to the founding of the party, and was dominant from about the time the slavery issue was settled until the 1960s Southern Strategy)

4) American nationalist (there’s actually a lot of these in both major parties; some late cold war issues, though, gave Reps an advantage here.)

5) White supremacist/nationalist (historically a strong Democratic consistuency from the founding of the Democratic-Republican Party with occasional rifts that healed because they had nowhere else to go (like the 1940s Dixiecrat split) until Johnson signed on to the Civil Rights Act and then the Republicans targeted this group heavily in the Southern Strategy (preventing that from being another temporary rift.)

[chaganated]

Perfect logocentrism example! That dragonwriter chose to split-hairs a little more finely doesn't make this statement into an improvement, or even a clarification, since the splits are (and always will be) a projection of the splitter's perspective, value-system, and goals.

Speak with a member of one of dragonwriter's phyla, and listen while the hair-splitting continues. Expose this 2nd-order hair-splitting to someone more aloof, and they will see it as an argument between insane people.

In troubled times, we have to stifle the narcissism of small differences, make a few concessions, and pick a side. knaq was close enough to begin with:

religious: 1 business: 2, 3 pro-america: 4, 5

[chaganated]

edit: dragonwriter's phyla of republicans, that is

[giantg2]

Libertarians have their own party separate from Republicans. I suppose some Republicans lean towards libertarian ideals.

[dragonwriter]

> Libertarians have their own party separate from Republicans.

Yes, pretty much every conceivable ideology in the US [0] has its own party (or more than one!) distinct from the two major parties for those adherents who don’t understand the futility of third parties under normal circumstances in the US electoral system, or who care more about ideological purity of association than acheiving policy goals through the political system, or who think that we are on the edge of a party shift where their preferred party could plausibly replace one of the two major parties (its happened twice before in US history, your party could be next!).

That doesn’t mean that many of those ideological factions that have their own parties don’t also have substantial (often, much larger) number of adherents within one, the other, or sometimes both of the major parties.

[0] For instance, a non-exhaustive list for the other factions I’ve identified as substantial Republican constituencies:

(1) Social/religious conservatives: Christian Liberty Party, Constitution Party

(3) corporate neoliberal capitalist: Unity Party, Moderate Party of Rhode Island

(4) American nationalist: Constitution Party

(5) White supremacist/nationalist: American Freedom Party, American Nazi Party

[giantg2]

"...acheiving policy goals through the political system"

Some of the roadblocks we face now are the result of our two party system.

But getting back to the actual question... what is the differentiating topics between a trump supporting conservative and a non-trump supporting conservative?

The point I was trying to make with the question is that you could potentially find a trump supporting conservative and non-trump supporting conservative that share the same opinion on a specific issue. These theoretical classifications (in some cases built on stereotypes) really aren't helping anything. For example, you could have a trump supporter in any of the categories you mentioned.