It's that level of hysteria what causes moderates to shift to the right.
As far as i can tell, moderates turn right because they dont like women running for office, and they like that trump has been on TV. they maybe also dont like brown people running, but thats only the one case.
who cares what moderates think though? elections are won by motivated your diehards to vote, and discouraging your opponents from voting
Trump is an autocrat - he expects everyone to simply fall in line with his orders, as opposed to delegation, separation of powers, and respecting the supreme rule of law. He's an authoritarian, in that he sees government intervention as the main answer to problems (most mainstream politicians are authoritarians, but bureaucratic authoritarians).
Liberty examples from before the second round ("track record") are less clear cut, but a straightforward one is the way he shunned the second amendment when police retaliated against Kenneth Walker for exercising his natural right to night time home defense. But now into the second round, we have gangs of thugs roving around and attacking citizens, so the obvious prediction was indeed correct.
And institutions? His first term, he picked a fight with the CDC for being politically incorrect. This time around, how many government institutions has he outright destroyed? Furthermore, he's graduated to attacking private institutions like universities. His whole popular shtick is basically one big rambling of grievances about US institutions.
I'm sorry that words mean things, and that you apparently have a negative emotional reaction to words that correctly describe Trump. I would call your statement an attempt at gaslighting. "Make America great again" is plainly a revanchist or reactionary (Moldbug's term) slogan, and therefore not conservative.
2) Enforcement of the law requires force. Who would have thought?
3) If an institution is corrupt it should be reformed or destroyed. What's wrong with that? Nothing.
I can't tell what point (2) is supposed to apply to. In general authoritarians are eager to use force to enforce top-down prescriptive laws, yes.
(3) I didn't say it's wrong to destroy or gut institutions perceived as corrupt. What I said is that it's not conservative.
2) Law enforcement. It's in the name.
3) Are you under the impression that "conservative" just means to keep things as they are no matter what?
Do you disagree that he is basically running the government as an extension of himself? To me, it sure seems that way when he uses chaotic tariffs to pressure other countries into making "deals" that often include his own personal financial interests.
(2) As I said, I don't understand what specific point of mine you're referring to. There are laws and enforcement in both individual liberty respecting societies, and also in dictatorships. So clearly it matters what the laws are, and how they're being enforced.
(3) No, which is why I was talking about respect for societal institutions. For every American thinker's elucidation of conservative values that I have tried to apply, if I squint I can see maybe 20-40% of them being applicable, with the rest being openly rejected.
Perhaps you would like to reference what specific set of conservative values you see Trumpism actually following? I don't mean aiming to destroy our society such to the point that conservative values will become more important, but actually applying those values to the present situation. Because as a libertarian who has entertained ideas all around the left-right political spectrum, the only thing I can find that lines up is anarcho-capitalism.
Or to come at it from a different direction, read Moldbug's "A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations". He lays out a left-right framework that seems to be underpinning much of this movement, and explicitly rejects conservatism as ineffective.
2) They are being enforced just fine.
3) You talk about conservative values but you mention none specifically.
(3) seems to be the crux of the issue. I am giving you the opening to pick a thinker who has best articulated what you see as a good enumeration of timeless conservative values, which we can then use to judge Trumpism. Because believe it or not, I am open to changing my mind here and I really do want to understand.
If you'd like me to pick, I can certainly do that. But then I don't want to then hear that I haven't picked the "right" conservative for your taste.
I occasionally come across one but for some reason they always get pressured out of the party.
The problem isn't the claimed actions they want to take, its the dehumanization being resorted to.
And he’s not entirely wrong either, it’s not all rocket scientists and engineers crossing the border.
Sure.
But the overwhelming majority of people called "nazis" by their political opponents have objectively not chosen anything remotely of the sort.