What Democrats miss about Republican thinking when they declaim the GOP should put country over party is that in the Republican mind he is putting the country first; the party is merely the vehicle, as is Trump.
To the Republican the liberals, Democrats, socialists, communists, Mexicans, Jews, Blacks, sluttish women, Christ-haters, immigrants legal and illegal, the gays…. IOW, all the people that did not exist in the minds of the Republicans of 1952.
For 1952 is the golden yesteryear when woman and Blacks had a place, knew it, and stayed in it. Jews were highly restricted to professorships and certain areas of the law, and the turn-of-the-century immigrants had pretty well been assimilated so as to be unnoticeable (notice how many Italian-surnamed individuals have an R by their names?) or were well established as character actors in B movies and vaudeville routines. (My grandfather used to try to do the accent of any person he was talking to: Irish, Black, Italian, Chinese – I wish I could have heard that.)
It is true that conservatism of the American variety, really reactionary rather than conservative, contains many people not old enough to remember the 50s. I certainly do and the vision they carry around in their heads is absurd, but you can’t tell them that. Their Uncle Harry – usually a great uncle – tells them all about it, how “we used to all get along” and the police kept everyone in line – which is what they are trying to do now if they weren’t interfered with my Black Lives Matter and other hate-America groups like the ACLU. Good old Uncle Harry, drawing his social security while he spews hatred of the “gummint”.
So the GOP hopes and plans with all the fervor the Dems lack to take us back. No doubt we’ll find unicorns there, too…… or is that a liberal trope?