A Cult of personality is a very authoritative weapon wielded by people with wealth and power. The founding fathers specifically disagreed with personality cults. Some people who have a personality cult are Hitler, Xi Xinping, Kim Jung Un, Donald J. Trump, and Javier Milei. That paired with populism and a country with no direction will always choose a strong man even if it puts them further from the wants of the constituents.
I won’t comment about the rest of your post but the idea of conservatism as an ideology is to preserve traditional values and ways of living. In an ever changing modern world in the richest most powerful country in human history, This approach tends to appeal to me less than a progressive approach. All it does it allow others to surpass us while we remain in the past. Culture is not permanent, it’s always changing. You can’t preserve it like you imagine. I say this as an aspiring anthropologist.