Can’t prove negatives. Conservatives don’t support Trump. Moderates do. The only question is why you are so averse to simply accepting that words and actions mean things.
Your argument is no different tans asking why Christians support abortion. Christians don’t support abortion. Nor do they vote for those that do because abortion is contrary to Christianity just as Trumps positions are counter to conservatism in enough instances to matter.
Bad analogy. Here’s a better one. You’re like a person saying, ‘You don’t have strep throat.’
The sick person says, ‘What are the symptoms of strep throat?’
You say, ‘Heartburn and backache. And you don’t have it.’
The issue here is more metaphysical.
Fantasy Writer seems to be asserting that one could be a conervative occultly, but in the semi-public act of voting, vote for the more liberal candidate.
Norm Lenhart is saying you are what you do.
Both assertions are problematic, but that’s a little off topic.
First, to Norm’s assertion, if we grant it for argument’s sake, what do we do with someone who voted for Reagan in 1980, and then Mondale in 1984? That’s not so troublesome as long as allow that someone who is a conservative today can be a liberal tomorrow.
To Fantasy’s assertion, let us also for argument’s sake grant it, and suppose one might have all sorts of other reasons for voting for the more liberal candidate, such as electability, etc. The question we must ask is, does it matter?
Effectively, a vote for the more liberal candidate is a vote for the more liberal candidate. It helps put the more liberal candidate into office, denying the more conservative. It is indistinguishable from the action of a liberal.
So from Norm’s perspective, the voter who selectsaid the more liberal officeseeker is functionally a liberal, and that is a meaningful and practical point of view.
From Fantasy’s perspective, the voter might have other considerations, and though he thinks his beliefs are conservative, he votes for the more liberal candidate. The problem is that the result of his point of view is irrelevant and ineffectual. The bottom line is that the voter, whatever his alleged interior beliefs, has enabled the more liberal candidate in preference to the more conservative candidate.