If we want to get a bit weird with it, I’m a Republican because of Trump, not because I like him, but because I want to vote against him at every chance I get. Before this I bounced around between being registered independent and various 3rd parties.

Overall I do tend to consider myself to be somewhat conservative but the Republican party always manages to go off the rails in a direction that is totally against my personal understanding of what conservatism should be. Pretty classic example is gay marriage. When I look at marriage through the ideas of small government, the constitutional separation of church and state, etc. my position is more that the government shouldn’t be involved in marriage full-stop. The idea of marriage is between you, your partner(s,) and whatever god or gods you do or don’t believe in, want to say you’re married, go for it, as far as the government should be concerned “marriage” shouldn’t have any more legal standing than being best friends. And as for all of the stuff with taxes, inheritance, etc. that the government does kind of need to concern itself with, that doesn’t need to have anything to do with marriage, if you want to share your benefits of file your taxes jointly with your friend, cousin, spouse, neighbor, barber, or have them designated to be the one who can make medical decisions, or to inherit your belongings after you die, that’s between you and them and the government is just there to make sure the paperwork is in order.

So when the options are the party that is open to more people getting married, and the ones who only want very narrow definitions of marriage, neither really fits my views, the “conservative” narrow definition of marriage is arguably technically closer in some senses to my ideal “the government doesn’t concern itself with marriage” situation, but in spirit the “liberal” system is closer to what I want.