Conservative simply means to preserve the status quos at large in society. It doesn’t have anything to do with limited government as it’s nothing more than a convenient selling point. You can see it in their policy pretty clearly I think.
The people I know that support very limited government tend to support the idea of radical changes from the current trends. Ironically I would say by now to support a limited and small government you’d have to support some radical departure from the norm
So like libertarians are kinda radical in some of their positions but they consider themselves more conservative than republicans. Who’s the actual conservatives here? I think I’d say neither really fit the bill but then, who is conservative? Tbh I don’t know anyone that’s like “this is pretty good let’s just stay course”
Which imo makes us have to ask why is this happening? Is this obfuscation of political positions in our language a deliberate thing? Because that’s some shit that’s happened historically with fascism so idk