Since the day Donald Trump came down that escalator in 2015, the MAGA movement has been engaged in a long-running, slow-rolling ideological and characterological transformation of the Republican Party. At each step, it has pushed Republicans further and further away from Reaganite conservatism. It has divorced Republican voters from any major consideration of character in leadership and all the while it has labeled people who resisted the change as “traitors.”

He gets into the details, labeling off instances where "MAGA," the thing he accuses of being conservatism's imposter replacement, have leveled threats and demonstrated violence. This includes intimidation of school board members as well as January 6 (insert thunderclap here):

Let’s take another assertion that should be relatively uncontroversial: Political violence and threats of violence have no place in the American democratic process. Yet threats and intimidation follow the MAGA movement like night follows day. One of the saddest stories of our time is the way in which even local election officials and local school board members fear for their safety. The level of threat against public officials has escalated in the MAGA era, MAGA Republicans often wield threats as a weapon against Republican dissenters, and every American should remember Jan. 6, when a mob of insurrectionists ransacked the Capitol.

‘Conservative’ Columnist David French Shocks the World by Announcing His Vote for President

I'm not going to analyze French's entire article since it's mostly vapid and reads more like a leftist's anti-Trump screed, and once you've read one, you've read them all at this point. 

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that there aren't members of Trump's fan club who aren't horrendous and will attack their fellow conservatives for not showing enough fealty to Trump. RedState has come under attack as leftist leaning, despite dealing serious blows to the Democrat machine and empowering the Republican Party by ridding it of its weaker elements, strictly because an author criticized Trump or showed too much enthusiasm for a different candidate during the primary. 

I think these people are absolute fools because they're blinded by loyalty to a man instead of to a principle. However, I consider disloyalty to a principle because of a hatred of a man to be just as foolish, and that's where I find someone like French. 

Kamala Harris is a woman whose principles and beliefs are based in Marxism. This isn't hyperbolic to say, as you can just listen to her speeches and professed beliefs to understand this. Moreover, Harris and her VP Walz are wholly opposed to free speech and most traditional values. 

The Anti-Free Speech Candidate

Is Trump a perfect candidate? No, but he is 100 percent a pro-American candidate who is far more in support of traditional values than Harris is, and I would rather see him in office than someone who would further devolve the United States into a radical leftist hellscape, which is exactly what Joe Biden has done and Harris will do if she's allowed to continue. 

Let's also remember that when the left is given power, Conservatism fights uphill battles to simply be heard. Progress is slow, and we're constantly reacting instead of going on the offensive. 

Is that the conservatism French wants to maintain? Because that's the conservatism he'll get. 

French is correct. The Republican Party is changing and so is conservatism, but nothing remains the same forever, and not all change is for the worse. The brutal truth that many have to accept is that this isn't the Reagan era anymore. As the world changes, everything has to change with it in order to match the moment. This doesn't mean an abandonment of principles, as French suggests, but a refinement of them. 

Besides, abandoning your principles to endorse those who completely reject them will not save your principles. You cannot protect your chastity by having promiscuous sex or fix your car's radiator by totaling the car. 

Kamala Harris is the antithesis to a strong America, the embrace of traditional values, and the health of the conservative movement. Will French and his like be sitting in their living rooms watching the world fall apart, censorship run rampant, taxes rise, inflation surge out of control, riots in the streets, drug-addicted homeless, sex trafficked people, rapes, murders, assaults, and children subjected to the left's radical whims, and then say to themselves "Hey...at least I saved conservatism"?