Please stop using "conservative" to reference the Republican Party

[JHB]

16. No. Despite Movement Conservatives never merely being conservative rather than radical...

...it's the term they used to describe themselves and the one they gleefully encouraged every right-wing nutbar to identify themselves as.

It's the "moderate conservatives", who somehow didn't see that their team really was and acted as cheerleaders right up to Trump and sometimes past, who need to find a new name for themselves because they crapped all over the one they had.

What "smooths their actual demeanor" is letting them wriggle out of the very thing that brought them to where they are now. Don't give them an "out". Hang them with their own rope. Ask the reasonable ones, that tiny, tiny sliver of them, "Wouldn't you like to be proud of being conservative again? When it wasn't a byword for foaming fanatics? If you want that word back you can start by stop telling yourself that Democrats and liberals are some kind of monsters and start working with us to bring down the people took the word away from you.

And by using "reactionary" you're missing an important point: In American politics, it is a rare, technical, and mostly academic term. It has no bite. The people who know that meaning of the word already agree with us. All you'll get from anyone else are blank looks and confused-puppy head-tilts.

This is a political fight, not a thesis. Don't "accurately describe" them. Hit them.