The major drawback of what is now called "conservatism" in the United States is that it dates back to Ronald Reagan's shell game. The major tenet of the current religion of conservatism, taxes are bad, spending is bad, is based upon a lie. A lie that George H. W. Bush called "Voodoo Economics" and he was quite right to do so. There is no evidence that tax cuts to the rich are an economic engine. There is long standing evidence that deficit spending is a growth engine. The people that laud Reagan's ideas forget that he did both. He spent billions on military boondogles at the same time he cut taxes. Bush II did the same thing and the actions of both lead to hard times for the economy near the end of their terms.

Good Government is necessary in a society this size. A real conservative realizes that and is against bad government.

A real conservative is against corporate welfare and subsidies more that personal welfare because corporate welfare leads to corruption.   

A real conservative is against corruption.

A real conservative, believes in conservation and does not commute in a hummer. There is an old and perfectly good description for someone who conspicuously hordes and wastes resources like that. It is "selfishness", not conservatism. People who point that out are often called "liberals" when they in fact are more conservative and simply brutally honest and outspoken.

A "Conservative talk show host" such as Limbaugh is someone with a mass audience who tells selfish people what they want to hear.

Most people in this country, who think that they are conservatives simply selfish or are people who have been hoodwinked by the Republicans and by corporate media.