Change of Course Quotes
When Donald Trump was running for the presidency as the Republican nominee, a large proportion of the party stalwarts were very unhappy with Trump's often extreme positions, which not only offended them put turned off most voters. After much negotiating the Republican leaders thought that they has an agreement whereby trump would pivot on the most egregious and unpopular positions. However many Republican leaders like Flake were not happy with Trump's pivoting technique.
This quotation is one of the clearest expressions of a principle of conservatism that non-conservatives find more frustrating than almost anything else. The “conservative” fundamentally wants to “conserve” what exists, and therefore change per se is not conservative. Conservatives have for years used the further argument that any reform or change is “untested” in compassion to the status quo which has “stood the test of time.” Using this logic, nothing in government would ever be changed unless the status quo is proved problematic and unacceptable. The problem with this few for most other people, is that nothing would ever be improved until it was shown to be terrible. It would be impossible to replace the adequate with the good or the good with the better—the better with the best. Philosophically, this is one of the major distinctions between conservatives and others. Ironically, the conservatives generally depart from this principle when they run their own businesses or other institutions as few would last very long with that approach.
