There are various formats of conservatives in the USA. The two main branches are the mildish conservatives and the CONservatives — or in other words the paleoconservatives and the neocons, with some crossover due to the religious traditionalists and evangelicals.

 

The major difference is that the paleoconservatives are happy to mind their own business in the world, while the neocons want to change the entire planet to their way of doing "freedom", including waging illegal war for this aim.
Conservatives are usually tradition-based in their thinking. No feminism here. New ideas are usually viewed with suspicion. Age-old rituals are at the centre of the core values on family, country, patriotism, religious values, gun rights and mercantilism of free-market — as long as it's profitable to Conservatism. Self-defence can be twisted quickly into a "justified" act of aggression in this conglomerate of old-fashioned ideals. There is an absolutism and a somewhat dangerous determined extremism in these visions.
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According to Wikipedia:

American conservatism is a broad system of political beliefs in the United States that is characterized by respect for American traditions, support for Judeo-Christian values, anti-communism, advocacy of American exceptionalism and a defense of Western culture from perceived threats posed by creeping socialism, feminism, moral relativism, multiculturalism, and liberal internationalism. Conservatives support capitalism and free market. 

Liberty is a core value, with a particular emphasis on strengthening the free market, and opposition to high taxes and government, or labor union encroachment on the entrepreneur. American conservatives usually place individual liberty as the fundamental trait of democracy, which contrasts with liberals, who generally place a greater value on equality and social justice.

Historians argue that the conservative tradition has played a major role in American politics and culture since the 1790s. However they have stressed that an organized conservative movement has played a key role in politics only since the 1950s. The recent movement is based in the Republican Party, though some Democrats were also important figures early in the movement's history.

The history of American conservatism has been marked by tensions and competing ideologies. Fiscal conservatives and libertarians favor small government, low taxes, limited regulation, and free enterprise. 

Social conservatives see traditional social values as threatened by secularism; they tend to support voluntary school prayer and oppose abortion and same sex marriage. Some also want the teaching of intelligent design or creationism allowed, as the topics are currently judicially prohibited in public schools. The 21st century has seen an increasingly fervent conservative support for Second Amendment rights of private citizens to own firearms. 

Neoconservatives want to expand American ideals throughout the world.

Paleoconservatives advocate restrictions on immigration, non-interventionist foreign policy, and stand in opposition to multiculturalism. Nationwide most factions, except some libertarians, support a unilateral foreign policy, and a strong military. The conservative movement of the 1950s attempted to bring together these divergent strands, stressing the need for unity to prevent the spread of "godless communism."

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We have dealt with the Neocons in "The Age of Deceit" introduction. They basically lie and are bellicose.

So where does trump fits in these models? For most of the conservatives he is a loose cannon. He cannot be trusted. He espouses conservatives ideals but they are muddled and conflicted — and often are over the top, dangerously expressed and loony, even for conservatives. The main problem with most conservatives is that Trump is popular. And I mean po-pu-lar. They did not expect this and it shows their lack of judgement. Due to his exposure on TV and his various one liners such as "you're fired", Trump has conquered a large portion of the unthinking masses. His Miss Worlds or Miss Universes has also got him a lot of traction with people who think that goddesses should show their legs but not be heard. Big points.

Most of the religious mob is spitting chips though. The evangelicals who subscribe to Trump do it because he is the only big cheese between the Democrats and the White House. These evangelicals will delude themselves into believing that Trump is a religious man. But they don't want another Democrat President making rulings about transgenders' pissoirs. Nor do they want abortions. Another major obstacle for Republicans is that Trump seems he does not want to play the Neoconic game and wants to be friend with Russia. This is totally unbelievable anathema.

In this atmosphere, one can note from various corners of the globe that all the pure Neocons in the English hegemony — that world ruled by America telling other nations what to do — there is an urgency at trying to create a major conflict with the Russians and a small one with the Chinese before the end of the Obama presidency — just so, that the next president, no matter who she is, is left with holding the glorious can of Neoconservatism.

The study of a magazine such as The American Conservative is interesting in its exposition of the lurking demons in the Republican party. This magazine was created by paleoconservatives and they have little desire in supporting the Neocons. None whatsoever. But in their opposition to and exposure of the Neocons' duplicitous travails, they have lost their way and have basically helped in the rise of Trump which is not much better. Sadly, there was no-one better...

At the moment the paleoconservatives are scrambling to collect some dudes with a bit more seriousness in vision and ability, but it's last minute stuff. The Cruzes and the Rubios were appalling candidates, and all the others were pretty absent in the pigeon loft department. The loft is where we breed racing birds or lame duds with poop everywhere. 

 

So here comes Sasse:

Ben Sasse is the man of the hour. On this first-term Republican senator from Nebraska lie the hopes of conservatives opposed to presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Conservative columnists beg him to run for president. Erick Erickson, arguably the right’s best-known blogger, calls him a hero and “the voice of intellectual conservatives in the United States.”

Sasse got their hopes up by being one of the first elected Republicans to say, in effect, “Never Trump.” “My current answer for who I would support in a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton is: Neither of them,” Sasse wrote in a widely circulated Facebook post. “I sincerely hope we select one of the other GOP candidates, but if Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option.”

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sasse-savior/

 

But for the paleoconservatives, this move could be too late. If fact, even for many other conservatives, Hillary Clinton is palatable, more palatable than Trump. But Hillary has to defeat Sanders and this battle may go to the wire considering that Sanders is truer left and Hillary is a Hawk.

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The other day, a question popped up on a Facebook thread I was commenting on: “Where is Victoria Nuland?” The short answer, of course, is that she is still holding down her position as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

But a related question begs for a more expansive response: Where will Victoria Nuland be after January? Nuland is one of Hillary Clinton’s protégés at the State Department, and she is also greatly admired by hardline Republicans. This suggests she would be easily approved by Congress as secretary of state or maybe even national-security adviser—which in turn suggests that her foreign-policy views deserve a closer look.

Nuland comes from what might be called the First Family of Military Interventionists. Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a leading neoconservative who co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a demand for “regime change” in Iraq. He is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an author, and a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of a number of national newspapers. He has already declared that he will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November, a shift away from the GOP that many have seen as a clever career-enhancing move for both him and his wife.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/clintons-hawk-in-waiting/

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There you have it... It's possible that whoever wins the race to the White House has to pop a Trump bubbly in celebration of winning the booby prize...

Meanwhile NATO is trying its darkest to provoke the Russians while the Americans are niggling at the Chinese. It could turn ugly.