It must feel strange to be one of the few "movement" conservatives left, the folks who still believe in state's rights small, local government, personal responsibility, character mattering, things like that.
If you're one of the faithful, your national and state leadership was revealed as liars, with no moral principles and no spine. You've been abandoned after years of believing.
Conservative means to me, emphasizing that rapid change in society has historically caused net harm. I see both major parties sitting on equal quantities of conservatism right now.
With all due respect, that's not the a good definition of conservatism before, or especially after, Trump. By your definition, the current conservatives exhibit little or none of your conservatism and the liberals have a lot.
You’ve described the realignment of conservatism that I see in American society.
Are Newt and Rush and Donald “owning the libs” with serial infidelity and multiple divorces? No, “owning the libs” only works directed at principled centrists or conservatives. Liberals are unperturbed by the “owning the libs” stuff because it’s only the kind of thing a bootlicking tool would say, like “heil Hitler”.
There’s another phenomenon (I’m in the Midwest where we say grace at a meal). Young people quoting Acts, while older people tend toward the Old Testament. I’m very careful when I say this: quoting the Old Testament is Judeo-Christian but it is distinctly different than following Christ as savior. This is crystal clear to young people in a paleoconservative way.
The embrace of Russia starting with Paul Manafort implanting words in the Republican Party platform in 2015. Someone like me sees the KGB fellas ascend at the end of Yeltsin and expects their old habits. Whether the guys around Putin can be trusted should be easy for a conservative to answer.
Seems to me that the few libertarians that stuck with their ideology are in the same boat as the movement conservative believers. A lot of the state level Libertarian Parties are Trump boosters now, a similar abandonment of principles as conservative leaders did.
I agree libertarian ideals and how it ties in with the GOP has always been questionable.
I don’t know if I’m really asking for a splinter group because I don’t think anyone in the GOP now is trustworthy (some who aren’t active maybe) …. As much as I would enjoy a third-party.
FWIW, The American liberal sentiment towards "big tech" is just as fickle, if not more. The funnier overall lesson is that neither side has learned to distrust the market. We've known for years that Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg are spineless sycophants.