[Pastiche]

For a guy that calls himself a Red Tory, he has absolutely no philosophical foundation to his research.

I guess this is where we fundamentally differ. For a guy who measures public opinion not having a philosophical foundation is probably a very good thing. But even then I would disagree with the statement. Adams doesn't use a traditional left-right ideology but he still has a framework for evaluating opinions. He uses the individualism - responsibility and deference - authority paradigm. That may be his own creation and should be criticized in its design but I find it illuminating and refreshing to move away from the stale liberal-conservative tautology.

First off, I totally disagree that we focused on a narrow definition of conservatism.

I guess in trying to be very broad you end up being too focused. The broad brush strokes must be covered by specific questions. So when I say narrow, the idea that someone who thinks we need to learn from past mistakes is now a conservative is just much too narrow in its conclusion. I just don't think you can make any solid conclusions based on those kind of value statements of a person's political affinities.

I think a much more interesting study for you to do would be to nail down a 21st century definition of conservative. Ask people if they identify as conservative or liberal and then look at how they answer questions differently. That would be my first starting pointing instead of using old world proxies like learning from the past and family is important kind of labels.