Why are so many American conservatives so willing to abandon conservatism?

[Pajeet123]

Not even an American so it's probably not my place to comment on this but still I lurk the conservative subreddit every now and then (Out of moderate interest in the American sports team politics) and alot of people there are like "We're losing young people so us conservatives should embrace mass immigration, abortion, lgbt activism and strict gun cuntrol and just focus on debating tax rates instead"

Just lmao

 

[Nottafed]

I think that is a subreddit hijacked and run by 'fake' conservatives and bots. All the real conservative users were finally banned during Covid, or just couldn't take it anymore. Pretty sure KF is one of the only places left not filled with larpers and schizoposters / feds too.

 

[Breadbassket]

Maybe since it's Reddit they have a lot of fake conservatives or at the very least ones whose stances wouldn't get them kicked off? There was a subreddit called the r/The_Donald for example which was banned in 2020 and moved onto its own site.

 

[Pajeet123]

Maybe since it's Reddit they have a lot of fake conservatives or at the very least ones whose stances wouldn't get them kicked off? There was a subreddit called the r/The_Donald for example which was banned in 2020 and moved onto its own site.

Yeah most of them are more libertarian than actually conservative. Pretty sure they had the gadsden flag as their sub icon for a while.

 

[Ashkenazi Porn Actress]

Reddit has been the most astroturfed site wrt politics since it's inception, the place was effectively the unofficial webpage of the DNC before Obama was elected.

 

[The Backwards Man]

still I lurk the conservative subreddit

Do not trust anything on reddit.

 

[BirdUp]

conservatism is too broad to define

 

[terraform45]

Grifters gonna grift

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Conservatism is a huge group.
They're more infighting than the left.

 

[Gas Station Boner Pills]

Pretty sure KF is one of the only places left not filled with larpers and schizoposters / feds too.

You must be new here.

 

[David Brown]

Conservatism is more like "stubborn status quoism" so they just do whatever is the current status quo, and then when they lose, they reorient to the new status quo. It's part of the script.

 

[The Ugly One]

Not even an American so it's probably not my place to comment on this but still I lurk the conservative subreddit every now and then (Out of moderate interest in the American sports team politics) and alot of people there are like "We're losing young people so us conservatives should embrace mass immigration, abortion, lgbt activism and strict gun cuntrol and just focus on debating tax rates instead"

Those people aren't abandoning conservatism. Abandoning everything to focus on marginal tax rates because you think young people will like you is what American conservatism has always been about.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Reddit is trash but conservatives have ditched conservatism since the 1960s. William Buckley best described conservatism as he envisioned it as telling the progressives to slow down. His faction wound up winning over the John Birch Society who were called crazy back then but in hindsight had no idea how long and fast we’ve been sliding down the slippery slope. Even the most wild eyed Bircher wouldn’t believe you that drag queens would teach their great-grandchildren about anal sex when they are five years old.

Basically most conservatives embrace left wing ideals but they want it done slowly. They conserve nothing because ultimately they agree with what’s being done. I was never a conservative but nationalism or populism has nothing to do with conservatism. David French and Lil’ Benji Shoahpiro are the modern representatives of conservatism and that’s precisely why things are as fucked as they are. Not much to conserve these days which is why they become cringesimps for baste minorities and gays.

 

[RybenZ999]

 

[Judex Meus]

Conservatism is a failed ideology. Attempting to tread water and "just not make things worse" has done nothing but marginally slow down the Overton window steadily shift further and further left. One reason the left seemingly keeps "winning" is because they're willing to embrace more and more extreme groups and shoot for more ambitious goals, so even when they don't quite hit the mark it's still a net win. Roe v. Wade is perhaps the only notable victory from the right in recent memory only due to how colossally shit the ruling was to begin with and the concerted effort by religious groups to repeal it. Without deliberate and conscious attempts to undo the left's "progress," conservatism will never succeed.

I say this in the nicest way possible as someone who was one for most of my life: if you willingly self-identify as a conservative, you are retarded.

 

[Need for Sped]

Several explanations come to mind for that kind of spiel, in order of gravity:

1) It's astroturfed bullshit on Reddit (So they're not even nominal conservatives)

2) It's spouted by disaffected ex-leftists who ended up being pushed out of the movement (Either left on their own or got Rowlinged), and they end up being conservatives by elimination (See the current crop of ex-democrats who may have left the party, but kept the same ideals)

3) It's a reflection of the paradigm of grifter politicians, by which the first objective is to keep themselves in power, so they'll pander whatever they think will get them votes. I'm surprised none have trooned out yet.

4) As mentioned above, throughout the last decades, conservativism has become a cargo cult. There's little to no ideological core in it save for "Muh taxes", and no proactivity whatsoever; pretty much every action they take is a reaction to the other side, while sharing the same mentality. Just look at their reactions every time they get a baste minority/tranny, or how much they obsess over "Muh black vote"

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

The reddit answer is probably something suitably retarded. The proper answer is that after Nixon and Goldwater both got ratfucked, the GOP has shown itself to be completely ineffectual. They haven’t even slowed anything down. People have been twigging to this forever but everything involving involving 2016 to now has made a lot of people hyper-aware of how precarious their position is.

 

[The Ugly One]

Conservatism is a failed ideology. Attempting to tread water and "just not make things worse" has done nothing but marginally slow down the Overton window steadily shift further and further left. One reason the left seemingly keeps "winning" is because they're willing to embrace more and more extreme groups and shoot for more ambitious goals, so even when they don't quite hit the mark it's still a net win. Roe v. Wade is perhaps the only notable victory from the right in recent memory only due to how colossally shit the ruling was to begin with and the concerted effort by religious groups to repeal it. Without deliberate and conscious attempts to undo the left's "progress," conservatism will never succeed.

I say this in the nicest way possible as someone who was one for most of my life: if you willingly self-identify as a conservative, you are retarded.

The general strategy of the left has been:

1. Identify a target group
2. Identify a felt problem that group has
3. Propose a solution that that problem

The general strategy of the right has been:

1. Whine that the left's solution sucks
2. Propose no solution of your own
3. Cry that solving problems, including problems caused by the left, is "socialism"

 

[Kankichi Ryotsu]

The conservative subreddit is a shithole. I joined their discord and they ban right wingers that go a bit too much against the current thing than literal socialists because "if we're intolerant then we're basically worse than the left!". This isn't an American phenomenon to be fair, I see it in my country where the conservatives are so utterly cucked and castrated that they bend backwards just to get that globohomo brownie points. I feel it's just a case of the political class being spineless hacks. Conservative politicians come from good families and never knew struggle, so they aren't willing to fight for ideals that aren't really the result of introspection but rather being the environment they grew up in. Sure, they like Christianity and low taxes because that's what they saw at home, but they never challenged their own ideals band arrived at conservative principles, so the end result is that they end up going for whatever policies will give them more votes and this help them conserve their government wages (so I guess they really conserve something, after all).

I feel like the conservative voter base is not like this at all and actually has some blood in their veins. The problem is that the masses are still the masses and therefore you can't expect much from them, so just have the conservative media sweet talk them and eventually they will embrace the lunacy of politicians that are supposed to represent them, but ultimately have completely different ideals. I think this course of events isn't irreversible and youngsters are more willing to accept the edgier parts of the right, but cuckservatism has still many years left, unless the communists take over before then, in which case it will be forcibly ended.

 

[Hyperbola]

Every single public figure has turned out to be some sort of lizard.

I remember reading the campaign website of Ted Cruz some election cycles back and thinking: "These priorities make no sense. This is the sort of thing some sort of actor would come up with (badly) trying to ape appeal to what he imagines brain-dead fundies are like." He turned out to be a lizard.

Real conservatives aren't very visible. They don't talk to the media (if they do, the media lies about them and arranges for them to be punished somehow.) They tend to have real jobs and responsibilities that they can't abandon or put under the threat of rampaging political fanatics. They have almost no political power.