Cognitive dissonance is no stranger to conservatives. Conservatives might war against genuine feminism because they misperceive feminism as something that is sexist towards men, all while pressuring men to conform to rigid stereotypes and hardly ever calling attention to true sexism against men. They condemn "big government," and rightly so, only to fail to be consistent: a consistent proponent of small government will be a libertarian! There is yet another fundamental incoherence in prominent conservative ideas.
Conservatives characterize almost all of government as inefficient and incompetent, using this claim as a basis for opposing "big government," but then they often simultaneously believe in conspiracy theories that, if true, characterize at least some in government as ruthlessly manipulative and powerful. It is not inherently contradictory to assert that the inefficient and manipulative members of a government are separate people, not that conspiracy theories would be any more epistemologically defensible with this distinction, but conservatives scarcely attempt to bring up nuance.
On one hand, government is said to represent the height of incompetence in the face of seemingly basic operations; on the other hand, government is said to be a bastion of careful, thorough, precise scheming against the wellbeing of American citizens. The exclusivity of these two possibilities when the majority of a government is characterized in such a way is blatant. For a government to be mostly one, it cannot be mostly the other. Conservatives cannot have it both ways at the same time.
They will usually appeal to one idea or the other as it benefits them to do so in various circumstances. If fostering a sense of fear is an ideal move in a given scenario, conservatives will insist that they must fight the "deep state" or some other alleged conspiracy. If trivializing a particular government action is desired, they can criticize the government for its real or perceived inefficiency. The two can be alternated back and forth as needed, and many conservatives will refuse to push back against other conservatives as long as their general goals overlap.
As members of the party that is allegedly concerned with rationality more than liberals--though liberal ideology is philosophically asinine in its own ways--conservatives are ironically oblivious to the many contradictory ideas they tend to hold at the same time. If a conservative was willing to forgo assumptions, it would be relatively easy to avoid an inconsistent worldview. Of course, given conservatism's fallacious foundations, a conservative who forgoes assumptions would give up conservatism altogether.
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