Exactly, only when convenient. A glaring example of this is when they decided that section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment did not disqualify Trump from the ballot. The plain language is not complicated:

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No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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Note that this amendment provides a legislative remedy: Congress can remove the disability by a two-thirds vote. Textualism, but only when it serves their purposes.

The case you’re referring to, Trump v. Anderson, was decided unanimously.

But that’s the point! The liberal justices could rule by taking into account any number of contingent factors established by decades of precedent. But the strict constitutionalists - the conservatives - should have ruled according to the text of the constitution, which is what they constantly claim they are doing. Except it seems to be just when that happens to coincide with their ideological priors.

"should have ruled according to the text of the constitution"

The actual ruling was NOT an "textualist" interpretation at all.

Here's a summary with the linked ruling in case you're interested:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/03/supreme-court-rules-state...

> The actual ruling was NOT an "textualist" interpretation at all.

That’s precisely my point. They are textualists when it’s convenient. When the textualist outcome would be unsatisfactory from an ideological perspective, then they aren’t textualists any more.

That's one possibility.

Another is that they're "originalists" in their interpretation. How do their decisions hold up if you apply that perspective?