I truly do not understand these attempts - from various angles - to make basic conservatism "relevant to our times"

I'll give you two examples. They are, in fact, pretty close to diametrically opposite each other, but both claim the conservative mantle and draw the reader in with an appeal to anybody with the brains to see that leftism is unacceptable. Within a few paragraphs in each case, however, things quickly go south.

Exhibit A is an essay by Richard North Patterson at The Bulwark entitled "Taking Reparations Seriously."

Seriously.

And let's for a moment leave aside what Patterson's curriculum vitae tells us about where he's coming from: former chair of Common Cause, ahem, and board member for Renew Democracy Initiative, which, while boasting the involvement of some figures I greatly respect, is presided over by the utterly goofy Max Boot. Let's also leave aside the drift exhibited by The Bulwark in its brief existence so far. The top story there is by Bill Weld, ahem, and is entitled "It's Time For Trump To Resign."

Anyway, back to Patterson's piece. He starts out using an observation by Charles Krauthammer to attempt to confer legitimacy on Ta-Nehisi Coates's entire thrust as a social critic - namely, that America's historical treatment of blacks, from slavery up through segregation of the military, to mid-century banking-industry lending practices to infant mortality rates, is unique among America's legacy problems. He even devotes a bit of verbiage to the decidedly non-conservative position that gentrification - white gentrification, doncha know - is harming deteriorating neighborhoods. Even says it's due to unequal lending practices. Excuse me, but banks are going to loan to developers who can prove they're good for the money.

He even attempts - in a "conservative" publication - to defend affirmative action. Would I ever love to see him debate Heather MacDonald. He'd get his tail end handed to him.

He has a lot more statistics and examples of disparity - household income, education, "access to jobs," as he puts it.

Then he sums up with this:

In short, black poverty is not white poverty’s cousin. And because it is so highly concentrated, to many whites it becomes virtually invisible. All too often black America is a place white America zips past on the highway. It becomes too easy to talk about black “pathology” while ignoring the racial pathology which is embedded in American life.

Notice the quotation marks around the word "pathology."

Two items for consideration:

1.) A whole lot of black conservatives - Larry Elder, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker, Candace Owens (to name the ones who come to mind immediately) - would take issue with the quotation marks.  Elder in particular is on record over and over again saying that fatherless black families are an overwhelmingly greater problem than any residual "systemic bigotry" or racism.

2.) Patterson nowhere offers a clear correlation between his exhaustive citation of disparities and some kind of ongoing "racial disadvantage." We're supposed to take it as a given because he says so.

So, no, a publication posting this kind of stuff is not conservative.

Now for Exhibit B. The Claremont Institute is embarking on a new project:

This essay is the launching document in a Claremont Institute intellectual and political campaign in defense of America against the threat of multiculturalism. Phase one of the campaign will run up until the 2020 American presidential election; phase two will in part depend on the outcome of that election.

Sounds great so far to this conservative. And the first seven paragraphs nearly had me fist-pumping, so resonant was I with its assertions:

Today, multiculturalism and its politics of identity pose an existential threat to the American political order comparable to slavery in the 1850s or communism during the Cold War. Once confined to graduate seminars and the ethnic “studies” departments at our nation’s colleges and universities, multiculturalism is now the authoritative ideology reigning over higher education, our media and political establishments, legal system, and corporate boardrooms.

If we do not reverse multiculturalism’s advance, it will continue to undermine our country and constitutionalism, destroying the possibility of a common good and a life of civic peace. Indeed, multiculturalism threatens to take down western civilization as whole.

By multiculturalism, we do not mean the mere presence of many cultures, races, or ethnic traditions, which are a fixture of modern American life and can be found across our states, communities, institutions, and private associations. One of America’s—and Americanism’s—great virtues has always been the maintenance of a wide realm of liberty and civic society in which a vibrant mix of cultural heritages and individual excellence could flourish.

America’s most important politico-cultural virtue, though, has been the insistence to its current—and especially potential—citizens that they assimilate to a certain view of justice embodied in the Declaration of Independence and safeguarded by our state and national political institutions, first and foremost the U.S. Constitution. E pluribus unum (“out of many, one”), America’s motto, means that assimilation has always been in our national DNA.

Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is not this benign tolerance of diverse traditions. Multiculturalism is a comprehensive ideology, demanding obeisance to a rigid system of justice, vices, and virtues. It boasts an intellectual tradition that guides its leadership and adherents in the policing of its boundaries and the maintenance of its categories. It keeps a running list of friends and enemies, a roster of praise, shame, and blame.

In short, multiculturalism is a worldview—a regime­, in the classical sense; a political and cultural way of life all wrapped up in one. As an ideology, it stands for nearly the opposite of America’s national motto. It seeks to divide and conquer Americans, making many groups out of one citizenry. The modern Left, accustomed to running the campuses according to the new social justice diktats of multiculturalism, now wants to run the world that way.

The threat multiculturalism presents to the American regime and our way of life is now urgent.

Yup, yup, yup, and yup.

But a few paragraphs later the piece goes all American Greatness on us:

The failure to apprehend fully and take seriously multiculturalism has also led many on the Right to misinterpret and underappreciate President Trump’s virtues and his significance as a political phenomenon. Trump understands instinctually that multiculturalism (and its politics of identity and political correctness) is anti-American. He understands that the unity found in patriotism is the antidote to a politics of group identity that if left unchallenged will irreparably divide and balkanize the American citizenry and lead to disunion.

The American Right’s failure to evaluate correctly President Trump, his political movement, and the nature of his opposition stems from a much deeper error. They cannot think prudentially.

Again, as in the very differently positioned Patterson piece, there's no real subtantiation of the correlation being asserted. The closest the Claremont essay gets is this vacuous utterance:

Trumpism shows us that we must position our movement as a defense of a traditional and confident America that rejects the politically correct cosmopolitanism of our elite. In other words, it offers the opportunity to fuse civic nationalism with the popular, cultural, and historical touchstones of American greatness. America is more than an idea—it is a people and a country.

Excuse me, but I always thought that conservatism was about immutable principles, not tailoring it to the peculiarities of a given age. "Stand athwart history yelling 'stop'" and all that.

All this gets back to the point of the post right under this. Trump is almost certain to be the 2020 GOP presidential candidate, and, barring a marked economic downturn in the next year and a half, almost certain to be the victor in the next election.

That's lamentable, in fact just plain awful, but squarely facing what is is another core facet of conservatism.

Why some "conservatives" think they have to go flirting with leftist viewpoints to brightly lay down their lines of demarcation separating them from Trumpism, or, on the other hand, claim, without substantiation, that Trump somehow has the key to defeating identity politics, is baffling to LITD.

The three pillars:

1.) Free market economics: A good or a service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth.  Period.  No other entity - certainly not government - has any business being involved in reaching that agreement.  Therefore, public-policy inquiries that concern themselves with macro-level phenomenon such as wealth inequality or “fair” wages are not only pointless but tyrannical by definition.

2.) The understanding that Western civilization is a unique blessing to the world: Both the Greco-Roman tradition from which the West has distilled the political structure of a representative democracy and the above-mentioned free-market economy, and the Judeo-Christian tradition from which it acquired an accurate understanding of the Creator’s nature and humankind’s proper relationship to the creator are the two most significant avenues of advancement our species has ever discovered.  (And much falls under this point that needs serious discussion at this time, such as the fact that there are only two genders, male and female, and that their is no fluidity between them, and that the family structure of a husband, wife and children thereof is the overwhelmingly normal one and the one most conducive to a happy and prosperous society.)

3.) A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature:  Evil is real and always with us.  A nation-state seeking a righteous world(such as the United States of America) should only form close alliances with other nations that have demonstrated a track record of common values.  Regimes that are clearly tyrannical and / or expansionist should never be appeased.  Indeed, foreign policy should be guided by thinking on how to at least eventually remove such regimes as problems on the world stage.

and the attendant virtues that conservatism insists on - dignity, decency, decorum, an inclination to make family foremost in one's life, and willingness to assume responsibility for one's own life - were right, true and good in Edmund Burke's day, in William Buckley's day, and at the dawn of the current century. 

Quit trying to add an "and" to it. Just let it guide your battles against leftism in its unadorned form.

You're not doing squat when you try to doll it up with some "angle" you think is going to be compellingly exotic.