Conservatives were never a "no change" party, anywhere. The thing they were conserving was the unearned privilige and prerogatives of the elite. Conservatism was started as a reaction against Englightment ideas of rule of law, meritocracy and accountability.

Conservativism has always represented the interests of the elite, whether those interests were precedented (like neoptism) or not (like, say, the enclosure of the commons in the UK).

That’s the terrifying thing: Republicans are no longer conservative and we don’t know what the hell they are.