Realistically, the political winds are drifting away from Conservatism. So yeah, expecting a bona fide "Conservative" candidate for president is a friggin pipe dream, at this point in our collective national demise.
The political winds are from windbags in Media, the purveyors of ignorance in schools and universities, and the architects and laborers of the ever so gradual loss of Liberty.
Watch "Die Hard" for a half dozen things in the first five minutes of the movie you can't do any more. You may find more.
It hasn't been that long.
You see, when those who take liberty take it from the masses, they've already been nibbling at the edges for some time. They don't go right down the center of the bell curve, they grind away at the ends, each time making those who want a little more or a little less than the statistical average to be "extremists", a viewpoint each successive generation has been subjected to while the frontiers of liberty are chewed away in the name of "safety", "Public safety", "for your own good" and even because it smells bad.
Well, this is what has been done with Liberty and our God Given Rights, and the more muddled the discussion can be made by those who are infringing those Rights, the more the philosophies of those 'dead white men' whose philosophy freed the slaves can be marginalized as coming from outmoded, gentry/gender/race/economic/philosophical roots which no longer apply, then the more truth can be stood upon its head and lies presented as the new gospel.
Marx forbid that the philosophies, the users manual for a human life, found in the Old and New Testaments be presented as the guide to safer, saner, happier and simpler living they are, a basis to build community upon.
Instead those are twisted to be the evil writings of those who would stop the libertine practices of "If it feels good, do it", without regard for the destruction to self, family, community, and nations that philosophy so often entails--a philosophy which especially appeals to the young. The philosophy of 'devil take the hindmost' ignores that there is always a new hindmost, eventually at the front of the pack.
In opposition to that, the essence of Conservatism is that people are treated fairly, that people have the same rights, to be freely practiced unless and until they conflict with the rights of others. We are, in that sense, all equal. That Government ought be empowered from the people upward, not edicts from a 'ruling' class levied on the masses (a 'class' which should, by rights, not even exist), and that government should be as local as possible.
For that purpose we adopted a Constitution, to lay out the functions and duties of Government, but even more, to limit its power, to retain that which should be local to the States, and to the People, themselves. Within those States, we adopted Constitutions to further lay out the duties and responsibilities of those govenments, and to safeguard the Rights of the People.
Urbanized masses who never realize there is another world beyond the city limits, who have abdicated the responsibilities of more rural people for the conveniences of urban life, seldom understand that they live a world apart from the vast areas of America where people have to have the Liberty to provide for themselves and their families, a world as alien to them as the urbocentric paradigms presented in mass media and even the portrayals of rural life broadcast thereby are to those of us who live in the vast depths of flyover country.
But before you can lead lions to the slaughter like sheep, you must first convince them they are sheep, and then the sheep can be herded, both by the sounds of their masters and the fences of legislation.
The thought that led to this Constitutional Republic evolved over thousands of years, once lost (because the contenders of Marxism and Islam tend to eradicate any memory or reference to anything else), it will be a long time before it resurfaces, if ever.
