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The Honestly podcast did an episode on Republicans for Harris, and the thing that stuck out to me the most was the tone: the folks in question are perhaps conservative, but what struck me most was their assumption of being elite. It almost felt like "We were okay with those folks voting with us as long as my elites chose the candidate and the proles fell in line behind us." Honestly, as a white collar centrist, the energy there rubbed me the wrong way, even though it probably didn't change my opinions on the candidates at all.
Absolutely not.
Small c-conservatism is extremely rare. Corporate Big-C conservatism is basically the evangelicals plus some neo-Reaganites. The trump to Thiel to Musk continuum is some mix of populism and techno-futurist populism (with weird undertones of benevolent oligarchy).
Small c-conservatism was under attack before WW2, got beaten close to death by FDR, and then had it's life support unplugged by the JFK-LBJ mega-admin. (Side note: Triple letter acronym Presidents are probably Satan).
Reagan fused the last remnants of OG conservatism with a neoconservatism (there's a reason the people serving in is admin coined this term for themselves after they left) that bridged The Greatest Generation with Baby Boomers who, in the 1980s, had mortgages, car payments, and families and so were a little less keen on the Free Love Summer of '68 vibes.
The "conservatives" after Reagan got utterly swallowed up by the 1990s economy, trade liberalism, and the cresting wave of hyper-individualism. These "conservatives" had the same appreciation for the constitution that liberals did, and broadly the same social values - they just wanted lower taxes and kind of thought gays were icky.
Those are now these "Republicans for Harris." Of course they sound elite - they sold out their principles 30 years ago to get in good with the elite globalists who, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, looked, for a time, like they'd Ended History.
1991-2001 was a fat dividend to the west that was almost immediately squandered. 2001-2008 was continuing to trust a foundation of beach sand. 2008 - 2016 - literally the Hope and Change presidency of Obama - was irrational optimism cope (fueled by a Federal Reserve pushing ZIRP).
2016-2024 was the cold plunge into real reality that hasn't been felt by most of society since before 1990. What's old is new again. It's going to get worse before it gets better. We're going to have to work very hard to fix things. Some won't make it.
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