If conservatives think the Republican Party doesn’t represent them, then why has that party continued to exist?

Because money is power. The hard-liners running the show keep it that way while ma and pa everyman in the midwest really don’t have any kind of say in it.

I would assert that any party based on conservative ideals will, at some point, become akin to what the Republican Party has become. And the sole reason — critical thinking is not a part of the ideology.

I firmly do actually believe that, yes. Eventually. But even when it devolves, it’s not going to be all of them. It’ll be a minority or people who have the money, which gives them the power, while ma and pa everyman in the midwest (again) has little control over who uses their ideals for what purpose.

Like the original person that replied to me, you’re doing the indefensible of automatically painting every single conservative with the same brush, and that’s just flat out inaccurate.

There’s a difference between believing in some backwards ideals like conservativism, and acting on them. I live surrounded by Conservative thinkers. And yeah, they’ll admit that they don’t believe in gay marraige, lgbtq, immigtation, etc… all of that stuff. Is it backwards? Yes…absolutely. Will they take up arms against a government and think advocate violence? No, that’s stupid. Despite their individual beliefs in their own home, they generally have the opinion of let everyone live their life.

Yeah, there’s people who are insane like that, and want to push that belief onto everyone. And yeah, their unfortunately in charge of the narrative of the GOP and the Republican Party.

But painting every single person on one side of the line as the same is not only wrong, it’s harmful to any sort of debate because if you pretend all conservatives are violent racists than you’ll just alienate the ones who aren’t.