I would be even blunter than this: American conservatism stopped caring about ideas a long time ago. The old conservatism died when a Black man was elected President, and has become just a raving, racist, atavistic ideology of blind hate and irrationality ever since. That an amoral grifter like Trump would wear its corpse like the bug-man in MIB was an inevitability. It's now about raw power, not ideas.