I'm aware that conservatives have a policy platform and that conservatives sell that platform by claiming to believe in various wholesome principles.

My argument, which you evidently don't understand, is that you can infer an underlying, unstated essence of conservatism by ignoring that rhetoric of salesmanship and looking at the systematic effects of their policies and attitudes. That's when the animalism comes to the fore, when you look at the way of life that conservatives see as ideal and that they try to enact.

The animality in question is primarily the dominance hierarchy or pecking order, the justification of vast social inequality that excuses the fact that such social structures are only the natural default ones, the ones found throughout the animal kingdom as opposed to unique God-given blessings. Hence the monarchies, plutocracies, and patriarchal, authoritarian bigotries championed by conservatives and resisted by progressives.

So the conservative may say he opposes homosexuality and abortion because of their "social and personal implications." But suddenly such implications are irrelevant when it comes to capital punishment, warmongering, and the social Darwinian treatment of the poor. You see, due to that incoherence, I advise ignoring the conservative's sales pitch as if it had never been made, and focusing like a laser on the actual effects of what conservatives tend to fight for. All I see in that case is the rampant animality sugarcoated with religious or libertarian blather.