The conservatives I've had the pleasure to meet in my lifetime all remember famous Republicans who really defined political philosophies contrary to the leftists. People like Abraham Lincoln,, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolige, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.
Barry Goldwater could have done great things for this nation but this was the 1960's, the era where if you didn't agree with people who were Socialists borderline Communists, you were a 'close-minded McCarthyist'.
Categorizing people who dissented from Sen. Goldwater's view with pejorative accusations of sympathy for hated foreign ideologies or a loud-mouth senator pandering for the fright vote was entirely wrong in the 1960s. Doing the same today with regard to those critical of this administration's policies - - or a shouting screed by a third-rate author - - is equally inconsistent with fervent, yet enthusiastic, political discussion. The issue cuts both ways however strange as that may sound to many here.
You mention an interesting group as "conservatives". The first two, at least, were considered pretty radical in their time by the "establishment", and Nixon is now considered farther to the left than he was at the time of his presidency.