Is American Conservatism a "hollowed-out ideological shell"?

[Virginiá]

Sure, most of it (and the primary question asked), but I disagree that Trump was the best they had and that the others would have been creamed. Perhaps by a version of Hillary Clinton without the email scandal (and the subsequent fbi investigation and Comey stuff), but that's not what version we got. All that scandal/drama, and all the other smaller issues she had really does add up and really did hurt her numbers. Far less offensive Republican candidates who, bland as they may be, probably would have been well-positioned to defeat her. To say otherwise seems like an endorsement of the idea that all that drama and scandal didn't really matter, which I vehemently disagree with.