Agreed. But conservatives have learned over the past 10-20 years that they can more or less just do whatever they want without consequence because 1/3 of the people will fight to the death for whatever they do or say, 1/3 is completely unaware and uninterested in politics and current events, and the final 1/3 is people like us who want consequences but we’re too busy to do anything ourselves because survival is hard enough these days. There are a hundred things worthy of outrage and organized demonstration too, so which cause do we dedicate our summer to trying to fix? The right has an easier time because they just say “things used to be better” and then have one event where people complain about change. Pretty much everybody can identify with being pissed off that something used to be better until they changed it, and for some reason that’s strong enough to get some pretty average people to sit at the table with Nazis. There’s much more nuance and thoughtfulness on the left, so it’s much harder to get unity.
Because conservatives can grow and maintain a reliable base to keep them in power, they feel no need to even pretend to be decent most of the time. They can just fervently choose their own selfish goals over what the Constitution or other rules and laws demand. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that we’re rapidly approaching the era of post-democracy America. Some would say we’ve been there for decades already, but I think we’re in for some dictatorial, executions-in-the-streets type of shit if Biden loses. So conservatives in power who like trump or even suspect that he may win or get into power otherwise have to weigh doing the right thing which could hurt their party and draw targets on their backs vs low/no consequence siding with trump.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”—David Frum