[itsanaccount]

> Conservatives lose any kind of intellectual high ground

I'm not sure what country you're from but in the US conservatism has always been a reductionist, post-hoc justification of doing "whatever the hell I want because I can", going back as far as I know political history. Civil war era at least, when states rights were when it was good for me and Federal enforcement when it was bad.

The market was free when that was how these groups made the most money, now that they arent making the most money its tossed out like yesterdays garbage. And if you believed "reasoning from principles" fluff around it, I think you could reconsider what incentives lead you originally down that path of weaponized naivety that is so common in this community (organized as it is around making money.)

[bediger4000]

The media typically let conservatives get by with assertions of principle in the past, and let them get away with slurs like "radical leftist" or "socialist". Conservatives in real life very often argued from principle in my experience, letting them override lived experience.