The word “conservative” has always meant the same precise thing: narcissism. It is the personal ideology of whatever is good for the conservative, dressed in a stoic preservation of an ideal that is poorly defined The conservative feigns resistance to change “for chage’s sake” but will instantly abandon any position the very instant that it affects them directly. There are no philosophical positions, no economic policies, no political ideologies that are inherently “conservative.” Rather, the conservative determines what is worthy of being “conserved” and what needs to be changed. There has never been universal agreement about what positions a conservative must adhere to, and the most successful conservative parties rally around the identity of the core leadership.

Trump is not an aberration of conservativism. He is the quintessence of conservativism, the inevitable avatar of pure conservative faith in the idea that being part of the in group is more important than whatever the in group stands for.

But there has never been any point in history where those who identify as “conservative” have been anything else.