Why don't they conserve people's rights to abortion and equality that have existed for decades? Why are they constantly cutting taxes on the rich instead of conserving the funding rates for the government? Why are they regressing to raciskband sexism of the the 50's when they are trying to "keep things from changing"?

Because they are not trying to prevent change. They are trying to prevent, and also undo, progress. They are regressives, not conservatives.

Conservatism is about preferring hierarchical power. It is merely correlated to maintaining the status quo to the extent that the status quo is very often strongly hierarchical. Make no mistake, however: conservatives in an egalitarian context would have no hesitation in jettisoning the status quo in order to create hierarchy where it didn't already exist.

Shoot. That's how you know I write how I speak.

Ignorance can surely explain why a pack of republican lawmakers spent the 4th of July at the Kremlin.

At this point, it's a distinction without a difference. Whether they are failing because of a plan, or because they are actual idiots is irrelevant.

To quote Aristophanes, “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

You're right, but as it's a distinction without a great difference I thought it best to connect that dot implicitly.

Back in 2012 through 2013 the GOP forced multiple federal shutdowns. Each one forced federal funding agencies to stop reviewing and handling research grants. Each time it derailed and delayed both my personal grants and our research group's work. This directly contributed to making it much more difficult for me (a recent grad) to get a faculty appointment that I'd been working towards during 13 years of college.

The GOP's talking points of how bad government is has direct and personal effects on people. Every time the government shuts down talking heads blather on how "See? Everything just keeps working even without the government! Obviously, we don't need it." They're wrong. The effects pile on as our nation's infrastructure grinds to a halt. People lose work, systems break down, and families are damaged by their selfish theft of our money (which is the whole point in the end).

I don't vote GOP. They don't care about me or my family. They've made that abundantly clear for decades now with no signs of changing. The sooner they're destroyed as a party, the better.

They will when people run against them and kick them out

If Congress isn't doing its job as a whole, the voters will vote out their individual Congressman, even if they're not the cause. If you know you're gonna lose your job because your coworker is fucking up you're gonna police them. If things get bad enough the entire Congress could be replaced for incompetence.

Voting transparency also allows those backroom deals, but this time the Congressman can show that they did what they were bribed to do. So even if a vote fails the person giving the bribe got what they paid for. Or, to put it another way, are you really gonna try to bribe someone if you can't verify that they're going to do what you paid them to do?

If voters want to be informed of their Congressman's positions, they can look at the records of debates and committee meetings. Votes are not the only way to know if your representative is doing their job.

These are the same reasons we have blind voting as individuals - so that voters can't be intimidated or paid to vote a certain way. I think Congress would work better if they went back to anonymous votes.

Best bet is to break up the 2-party system.

I think getting Congress back to anonymous voting is a far more achievable goal, and might actually help with that.