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Notes -
The takeover of the American conservative movement by people who find the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South fundamentally sympathetic (not all of whom are white supremacists or white nationalists themselves - Buckley probably was but Goldwater and Reagan definitely weren't) never happened because the modern American conservative movement was founded by people who found the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South fundamentally sympathetic. (The American conservative movement is not the same thing as the GOP).
The sort of people who find the Confederacy sympathetic have never been particularly fond of "America" the actually-existing political entity between the Rio Grande and the 49th parallel, or its government, or its damnyankee ruling class, or its urban middle class with its dastardly (i.e. secular) booklarning. (Buckley, for instance, comes out against all of these things in the 1950s). What is fairly recent is that this has boiled over in a way which makes "hate" a plausible descriptor. Or, more correctly, boiled over again given the unfortunate incident in the 1860s.
Sure, but in this case the actors are both contradicting themselves.
Currently, the "conservatives" (as they call themselves- I call them traditionalists, as they have conserved nothing) might be sympathetic to the Confederacy as an axiom, but are acting like Unionists right now with all the anti-slavery stuff.
This is in stark contrast to the "progressives" (as I call them- they call themselves 'liberals', but that's just stolen valor), which are existentially hostile to the Confederacy, but are indistinguishable from Confederates right now with all the "don't take our slaves away"/"State's Rights [to keep slaves]" stuff.
So you have a situation where the founding myths are contradicted on both sides: that the Union was bad for doing what they did in 1860 on the Conservative side (on balance, probably wasn't), and that the Confederates [and the economic benefits of slavery they so desired] were the actual good guys on the Progressive side (on balance, probably wasn't).
The side that's forced to give will probably win... but they also won't be that side any more. They'll be something else.
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