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Notes -
It's interesting that you've framed this as a comparison between "progressives" (a political belief system) and "Republicans" (a political party and its supporters). In that case, you could argue that "Republicans" are just the political coalition of different interest groups that are opposed to progressivism for one reason or another. But if you'd said "Democrats" instead of "progressives" you could just as easily say "Democrats are the political coalition of different interest groups that are opposed to conservatism". Lots of people vote Republican because they really don't like some key progressive policy and have nowhere else to go in the USA's two-party system, and vice versa, as opposed to enthusiastically supporting the whole party platform.
Occasionally somebody will say something like "In politics, at some point you have to go beyond just opposing things you don't agree with. You have to actually be for something." This is harder for conservatives from a political standpoint because in many cases, the solutions they favor for problems (when they agree with progressives on what things are problems) are more personal, private and local, and so there's no alternative government solution to propose.
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