I think the conservative position has always been for border security. It’s not a knock on conservatism if someone like Rubio gets in and changes his position to the liberal one afterwards. That only underlines the correctness of the conservative position. I don’t think anyone’s running on cutting back legal immigration, other than refugees/Muslims.
Free trade, I’ll agree is a generally conservative position that Trump departs from. Conservatives are always against tariffs. Reagan and G.W. Bush both upset conservatives by enacting some.
If you’re just talking about ‘better trade deals,’ that’s one of those vague promises that everyone will agree with. Trump doesn’t seem to be arguing for no trade deals at all.
Trade agreements are at the bottom of the list of issues I care about. I have no concept of how many potential voters out there care about them or which party they usually vote for.
I don’t think you can analyze the history of conservatism as a governing philosophy in absolute, purist terms. We have certainly had governments that were MORE conservative than others and which have a good case to make that they got better results. Namely Reagan’s administration and Newt’s reign as Speaker.
Just as importantly, the Democrats themselves used to be more conservative on taxes, the military, marriage, religion, etc. Conservatives will argue that it’s the decline of conservatism in both parties and in the country as a whole that has led to the country being worse off. And we will also argue that to the extent the U.S.A. is performing better than other countries, it’s due to us governing in a more conservative way than those countries.
Yet Reagan got taken to the cleaners on domestic spending because he wanted the military buildup to bankrupt the Soviets, so went the horse-trade with Tip...he was acting pragmatically, not conservatively in that instance. And Newt’s day in Congress was the time when the first economic bubble was created (the DotCom) and the Congress gave birth to the second bubble (the Housing Market). So even a part of the government being more conservative does not give us very good test of the more vs. less assumption. Conservatism never had its day in modern history...and now it has been co-opted by those with other agendas. In part that is undoubtedly due to conservative thought being overwhelmed by modern society. Very few conservatives actually exist today, certainly not enough to enact policy on a national level in a society rapidly becoming socialist.
And that’s the rub in the end, even if a pragmatist took power, it would be fleeting likely in socialist dominated world where internationalism is the rule of the day.