in the 1990s through the twenty-aughts. Conservative is, however, a basic personality type, which is both genetically linked and heavily influenced by environment, and conservatives, half of all Americans, will always be with us.
To guess where we're going, we need to look at what the hell happened to today's conservatives.
Abraham Lincoln stated what he felt was most valuable in conservatism when he said, “What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?” Based on that idea and some others, during the last century conservative scholars attempted to create the first-ever intellectual basis for conservatism, not merely emotional resistance to change and differences arising from personality.
As we can see, it didn't stick. Adherence to the old -- the progressive liberal democracy all America had grown up with and government of, by and for the people -- didn't work for the new ultra-wealthy classes. So they used new mass persuasion techniques to turn the entire nation more conservative and encourage negative conservative traits. The goals were to divide and conquer by turning the right against the left and, in the process, to turn them against the liberalism that is a huge part of their own lives and wellbeing.
In the process, serious cultural differences were encouraged and became a genuine culture war for a large minority who have become very angry at losing at the polls for decades. As part of this movement, Christianity itself is being restyled by some on the far right to reject liberal interpretations of the New Testament as wrong; Jesus would never support the evils of liberalism and progressivism. Same for our constitution, the right is being taught that 235 years of interpretations have been corrupted by a liberalism that was never intended.
So, under all these poisonous influences, a large minority is now responding passionately to calls from destructive populist, authoritarian, nationalist leaders to reform our nation and rid it of the liberal corruption they insist is destroying it. These are the conservatives who are embracing nationalism and authoritarianism. Other conservatives are not fighting it, but are apparently finally starting to worry.
By far most of these destructive voters are politically on the right. But some are on the left. And since democracy is about counting votes, we need to recognize that this vast right-wing conspiracy was and is also aimed at using populist passions to erode support for liberal democracy on the left also.
Who will be "too socialist" next? Can't guess. But maybe no one. Maybe a hostile "socialist" leader will arise who sees this as an opportunity to destroy the Democratic Party; of course, if so, the Republicans will assist. The Nazis did a variation on this. Germany's National Socialist Party was initially lead by arch-conservative Hitler and a socialist co-leader, drawing support to their nationalist populist movement from both right and left. Then, once their party had enough power, Hitler had the other guy executed. Of course, then suddenly every socialist was "too socialist," so they all became Nazis for their own good.
On the plus side of this question, though, look at the midterms. That message just a month ago was that the vast right wing conspiracy is currently failing. It might still prevail through Nazi-level election thefts (a major tactic), but only that way. We now know that most Americans still want our nation to be what we all grew up with.
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