Canada

There are genuinely intellectual conservatives

There are not.

Conservatism is ingroup loyalty as a theory-of-everything. They'll invent whatever pretense is necessary to promote the hierarchy of their guys over our guys, because they think that's all there is to reality, let alone all there is to argument. To be a conservative is to be in this form of tribe.

The smarter ones invent better bullshit. That bullshit tricks people who are not doing performative loyalty. Some of us argue against it, like the answer would change who they're loyal to - some of us argue for it, because 'what the loyalists really mean' is desirable, regardless of the unrelated awful shit they keep doing instead.

You're describing people who bought and defended the bullshit. Actual conservatives now call them communist traitors. They don't fucking care what they said yesterday. They don't understand why you do.

Conservatives will abandon any idea, in favor of loyalty. They do not believe ideas. They believe people. If their top guy says the sky is green, you better fucking agree with him, and make up some bullshit to explain why - or you're saying he doesn't belong on top. Disagreement and disloyalty are the same thing, in conservatism. Nothing they do makes sense until you understand this.