I think this is where you get an interesting debate, and this is what I was getting at in the OP. The republican party has changed. The republican party is no longer defined as open markets and small government. There's a lot of populists in the party now, a lot of people who want big government to run the markets and consider themselves the real conservatives of traditional, American, conservative values.
I agree that the Republican party has changed dramatically and abandoned all its former principles. But when these neo-Populists call themselves the "real Conservatives of traditional, American, Conservative values" that doesn't change the meaning of the word "Conservative" that only makes the neo-Populists wrong in their belief that they are Conservative anymore. Just because the Nazis called themselves Socialists doesn't mean they were Socialists. The definitions of words don't change just because people use the word deceptively. The principles of American Conservatism don't change just because the Republicans stopped believing in them.
If you ask people like Tucker Carlson, who now speaks for the masses, as I think he is still the most popular host on Fox News, the republican party of the past was not really conservatives but elites masquerading as conservatives.
Tucker Carlson is certainly speaking to and for the Trumpists, which makes a good-sized mob but hardly "the masses"- just under half of Republicans, or 1 in 5 voters or about 13% of Americans overall. Still, I consider Tucker Carlson a perfect illustration of the Republicans" Orwellian rudderlessness. On the night of Jan 6th, Carlson reported that Trump "recklessly encouraged" the attack on the Capitol. Six weeks later, Carlson characterizes Liz Cheney's identical statement as obedience to the Fascist Left. In 2018, Carlson's lawyers argued in court that Carlson can't be held liable for slander because "the "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' and that "no reasonable person" would take what Tucker says seriously. Weeks later, Alex Jones' lawyers made the exact same argument in his custody battle- Alex Jones is just playing a character for entertainment purposes and "no reasonable person" would take his editorial opinion seriously. Trump's lawyer and main propagator of the election fraud falsehoods used to justify the Jan 6th coup attempt argued in court on Mar 23rd that when it came to claims of election fraud, "No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact." When under penalty of perjury (and only then apparently) the core of the Republican Party will swear to God that they are not serious people stating actual beliefs, that they are actors paid to play a part and that no reasonable person should believe them. Trump is the first and the worst of them, the most prolific liar in history: saying in public that COVID is not to be feared while simultaneously confiding to Bob Woodward his understanding of the peril; conceding the election one day, then the next saying he expects to be President again by August. Putin and Kim Jong-Un are friends. ANTIFA did Jan 6th. Bob Barr is really a "swamp creature." There is no Republican reality except what suits the power play of the moment. All ideological core is gone- even officially, the Republican Party no longer has a political platform or statement of first principles.
Yes the Republican Party was traditionally the party of the elite establishment and that establishment always tends towards Conservatism because the traditional has worked out well for them, they don't want change because they are in power, they want small government because the elites have their own bases of power. The notion that billionaire NY real estate moguls DON'T represent the elite establishment but AOC or BLM DOES represent the elite establishment is just more proof of FOX doublethink. As Orwell put it:
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink."
ANTIFA did Jan 6th but also Jan 6th was no big deal but also Jan 6th was justified. The election of Biden was fraud but also the election of GOP Senators was fair.
COVID is a Chinese attack but also vaccines are a Fauci conspiracy. The poor are the elite and racial minorities the establishment. Whatever Tucker says today must be true even after he swore that he can't be trusted.
I think there is real tension in the party, which is funny, because people always talk about how its the democrats that are divided and they certainly are, but so are the republicans over what real conservativism means. It uses to be conservatives were one thing, but now they see the other branches of government as corrupt and so if they think all government is corrupt and you can only trust one man, I don't know, it's interesting how definitions may change.
Definitions of words don't change because just political interests employ words deceptively. American Conservatism is still what it was. Republicans used to fault John Paul Stevens for transitioning from the most Conservative appointee to the Supreme Court to the most Liberal but Stevens quite correctly points out that fifty years of his judicial philosophy is on the record and remained exactly the same. What has changed is the Republican Party. Romney and Cheney, the Bushes and George Will have not changed their political philosophy- they are still conservatives in the traditional American sense. They are RINOs now because the Republican Party no longer values Conservatism or indeed any political principle at all.
