I was permanently turned off from conventional conservatism by its dogged refusal to stop being stupid about evolution in the 2000s. For about a decade afterward I was a liberal by default. I was peripherally aware of race-nuttery and gender-nuttery but didn't think they had any effect in the real world. Then sometime in 2016 I saw the feminist response to the New Year of Sexual-Assault-by-Muslim in Cologne and was utterly appalled by both. Later that year I saw a video of Ben Shapiro (I know) doing his thing at Yale or somewhere, and while I approved of his "owning the libs" I thought his positions relating to race were laughably weak. So basically I realized that left-nuttery does have real-world consequences. it needs to be successfully opposed, and conventional conservatism does not have what it takes.