You should make peace with that, and accept that the real values that represent the end game of conservative politics have finally shown themselves. There is no going back.
I stand by my conservative values. Most of the conservatives that think like me are Democrats now
Correct, which is further dragging the Overton window to the right. Everything conservatism touches is tainted, and ultimately destroyed. It is a self-defeating philosophy.
Look, the best way to decide what you mean here is just to tell us your favorite Republican President.
I’m not going to judge by presidents I haven’t experienced first hand and I’m relatively young, so I’m going to have to go with Bush Jr
1 million deaths in an unnecessary war in Iraq is what does it for you, huh?
You're right. You're just as fucked up and horrible as any random Republican.
You asked me which is my favorite Republican. In my life time there have been two: GWB and DJT. You didn’t say which was my favorite president, just Republican. I chose the better of the two choices, in my opinion. Would you prefer Trump?
Or are you admitting that you asked a bad faith question? Keep in mind you didn’t ask which one I thought was good, just favorite of a subset
I'm just trying to figure out what you mean when you call yourself a Conservative. If you're implying that your favorite president (in your lifetime) would be a Democrat, I don't think you're using the word "Conservative" to mean the same thing everyone else interprets it to mean. Most Conservatives in America accuse Democrats of being Communists.
It's almost like you're self-identifying as the caricature of a liberal that Tankies believe in.
You are conflating conservative and Republican.
You can be a conservative without being a Republican. I don’t play party politics. Voting for (R) without looking at actual beliefs and policies is just as stupid as the “vote blue no matter who” policy.
To be completely transparent, I don’t have a favorite. The most sane one was probably Obama.
Look, words mean things, and in the American system of politics, calling yourself a "conservative" has a specific meaning. 99.9% of people are going to read that to mean that you are a Republican or a Trumper. You are welcome to use whatever labels you want to describe yourself, but when you run into this issue where people have no fucking clue what you are trying to say because you are using words differently than everyone else does, just remember, this is entirely your fault for not speaking clearly and using words as the are understood by others.
As far as I can tell you are a liberal-leaning centrist. Your decision to brand yourself "conservative" comes across as needlessly contrarian. Pretty much everyone in this country that self-identifies as "conservative" fits a specific regressive archetype and votes Republican. You're not going to meaningfully be able to define yourself as the exception to this rule. You're just defining yourself as "conservative", and getting frustrated that people are interpreting that word for what it means 99.9% of the time they hear it, rather than adopting your personalized definition of the word.
This is like calling yourself "pro-life" because you oppose with the death penalty, or calling yourself "pro-Russia" because you like Russian food. While these terms are semantically fitting for what you are trying to say, it won't matter, because when you say you're pro-life they're going to think you are against Women's rights, and when you say you are pro-Russia, they are going to think you are a Putin supporter, because co-opting terms that already have colloquial definitions is just inviting people to misunderstand you.
You should make peace with that, and accept that the real values that represent the end game of conservative politics have finally shown themselves. There is no going back.
I stand by my conservative values. Most of the conservatives that think like me are Democrats now
Correct, which is further dragging the Overton window to the right. Everything conservatism touches is tainted, and ultimately destroyed. It is a self-defeating philosophy.
Look, the best way to decide what you mean here is just to tell us your favorite Republican President.
I’m not going to judge by presidents I haven’t experienced first hand and I’m relatively young, so I’m going to have to go with Bush Jr
1 million deaths in an unnecessary war in Iraq is what does it for you, huh?
You're right. You're just as fucked up and horrible as any random Republican.
You asked me which is my favorite Republican. In my life time there have been two: GWB and DJT. You didn’t say which was my favorite president, just Republican. I chose the better of the two choices, in my opinion. Would you prefer Trump?
Or are you admitting that you asked a bad faith question? Keep in mind you didn’t ask which one I thought was good, just favorite of a subset
I'm just trying to figure out what you mean when you call yourself a Conservative. If you're implying that your favorite president (in your lifetime) would be a Democrat, I don't think you're using the word "Conservative" to mean the same thing everyone else interprets it to mean. Most Conservatives in America accuse Democrats of being Communists.
It's almost like you're self-identifying as the caricature of a liberal that Tankies believe in.
You are conflating conservative and Republican.
You can be a conservative without being a Republican. I don’t play party politics. Voting for (R) without looking at actual beliefs and policies is just as stupid as the “vote blue no matter who” policy.
To be completely transparent, I don’t have a favorite. The most sane one was probably Obama.
Look, words mean things, and in the American system of politics, calling yourself a "conservative" has a specific meaning. 99.9% of people are going to read that to mean that you are a Republican or a Trumper. You are welcome to use whatever labels you want to describe yourself, but when you run into this issue where people have no fucking clue what you are trying to say because you are using words differently than everyone else does, just remember, this is entirely your fault for not speaking clearly and using words as the are understood by others.
As far as I can tell you are a liberal-leaning centrist. Your decision to brand yourself "conservative" comes across as needlessly contrarian. Pretty much everyone in this country that self-identifies as "conservative" fits a specific regressive archetype and votes Republican. You're not going to meaningfully be able to define yourself as the exception to this rule. You're just defining yourself as "conservative", and getting frustrated that people are interpreting that word for what it means 99.9% of the time they hear it, rather than adopting your personalized definition of the word.
This is like calling yourself "pro-life" because you oppose with the death penalty, or calling yourself "pro-Russia" because you like Russian food. While these terms are semantically fitting for what you are trying to say, it won't matter, because when you say you're pro-life they're going to think you are against Women's rights, and when you say you are pro-Russia, they are going to think you are a Putin supporter, because co-opting terms that already have colloquial definitions is just inviting people to misunderstand you.