There's also the added wrinkle that some conservatives (pre-Trump, mostly) were trying to conserve American founding philosophy, which is itself not conservative at all. Trying to conserve what is a radical position in any other context ("we need to go back to the good old days of Thomas Paine! No kings, no rulers!") added to the internal confusion of conservatives, imo.
Trump is indeed a radical. And I'm fascinated by the far more stolid conservatives who embrace him. I know conservatives who'd never never him in their house but still vote for him.
My understanding, informed by conversations with historians of the right, as well as people who study—and know much more than I do about—American evangelical movements, is that the disconnect between, say, Trump displaying very little in the way of what we might think of as the Christian virtues, but also being the overwhelming choice of evangelical Christians when it comes to voting (there's no group, I belief, he got a higher vote share of), is explained by the "He's our son of a bitch" excuse. That he might personally be loathsome, but in times like these, when the threat to "real American" values is so dire, you don't want a meek and virtuous person, but instead a pugnacious firebrand who will stand up for you and fight back. When you couple that with the dominance of negative partisanship ("I don't like my side much, but I absolutely can't stand the other side"), the "conservatives who ought to know better" confusion looks a bit less confusing.
In Israel we have a parallel to this in the ultra-orthodox's support for Benyamin Netanyahu. They know that Bibi is a lying, cheating, shrimp-eating divorcee. But he gives them what they want, economically and politically, for their support. They also have a name for people like that: "Messiah's donkey"
There's also the added wrinkle that some conservatives (pre-Trump, mostly) were trying to conserve American founding philosophy, which is itself not conservative at all. Trying to conserve what is a radical position in any other context ("we need to go back to the good old days of Thomas Paine! No kings, no rulers!") added to the internal confusion of conservatives, imo.
Trump is indeed a radical. And I'm fascinated by the far more stolid conservatives who embrace him. I know conservatives who'd never never him in their house but still vote for him.
My understanding, informed by conversations with historians of the right, as well as people who study—and know much more than I do about—American evangelical movements, is that the disconnect between, say, Trump displaying very little in the way of what we might think of as the Christian virtues, but also being the overwhelming choice of evangelical Christians when it comes to voting (there's no group, I belief, he got a higher vote share of), is explained by the "He's our son of a bitch" excuse. That he might personally be loathsome, but in times like these, when the threat to "real American" values is so dire, you don't want a meek and virtuous person, but instead a pugnacious firebrand who will stand up for you and fight back. When you couple that with the dominance of negative partisanship ("I don't like my side much, but I absolutely can't stand the other side"), the "conservatives who ought to know better" confusion looks a bit less confusing.
In Israel we have a parallel to this in the ultra-orthodox's support for Benyamin Netanyahu. They know that Bibi is a lying, cheating, shrimp-eating divorcee. But he gives them what they want, economically and politically, for their support. They also have a name for people like that: "Messiah's donkey"