My girlfriend before high school, had a friendship with 3 girls. Girl 1 claimed to be bi and later a lesbian but was straight and hung out with homophobic spoiled girls. Girl 2 claimed to be bi too and later an ally but then said she was actually homophobic and Christian. Girl 3 is extremely Christian, all 3 girls are Christian. She is anti-transition, defends Trump, and also wants to mass murder anti-Christians and abolish their religions or lack thereof.
None of these people seem like allies, they seem like virtue signalers.
No, progressive=principled, and conservative=egocentric. You can be principled and be a bad person, and you can be egocentric and still be a good person. It’s tougher when the leader of your party is the personified avatar of avarice and corruption. But being selfish isn’t the same as being bad.
For example, consider the classic breed of conservative, the NIMBY. Infrastructure is important for society, and it must go somewhere. If a new high speed rail will connect residential and commercial areas, improving the lives and economy for millions of people, but the pathway goes through your backyard, you might find yourself feeling a little bit conservative. Does this need to be built? Does it need to be built here? That doesn’t make you a bad person. A progressive who believes in building public transportation would be willing to sacrifice property values and the quiet enjoyment of their landscape.
The relevant part of the analogy is that the conservative doesn’t give a shit about your backyard. They might support paving through your living room if they will be one of those who benefits from the public transit. Or if they don’t benefit, they might oppose spending the money in hopes of a tax break, or try to make it a wedge issue to benefit politically. If the conservative owns a gravel plant, and will profit directly from the rail construction, they will fight tooth and nail to make it wider than necessary.
Because there isn’t a unifying conservative value underpinning any of their positions. If a progressive opposes the construction, it’s likely due to environmental concerns, or property rights, or some other principle upon which they have decide to stand. Sincere people can have honest disagreements about the right and wrong things for our country. It takes a conservative to shift right and wrong depending on their precise location in spacetime.