He had "many" top cabinet appointments who were Federalists?
Again, you need to check your history. Washington did not even have "many" cabinet positions to appoint in the first place. I'll concede your argument if your definition of "many" is ... THREE. [And actually, it's more like TWO.]
Edmund Randolph, though nominally a "Federalist," was probably closer to Madison's "Federalism" than he was Hamilton's. He was certainly no Anglophile -- one of the darker marks of the Federalist tribe -- and he did not support Virginia's ratification of the Constitution. His role in the Constitutional debates in Virginia was largely to insert language much more favorable to the anti-Federalists in both tone and substance to Virginia's position. Eventually, he voted for ratification, but ONLY because eight other states had already done so. And he made that reason plain in casting his vote. He remained very deeply suspicious of Federal power; much more so than Madison, who was not a Federalist. Randolph is difficult to claim as anything but a FINO.
But this is all wide of my original point. The OP attempted to draw Washington into my criticisms of Alexander Hamilton. There is no doubt that Hamilton was a Big Government "conservative." Simply because Washington was susceptible to Hamilton's influence in some areas, that does not make Washington a Hamiltonian Federalist.
Asserting the synedoche "Hamilton equals all founding conservatives" is like asserting "George W. Bush equals all contemporary ones."
Like the claim that Jefferson was a "liberal," this argument is hogwash.
The Federalist Party, as Randolph's counterpoint to Hamilton clearly shows, admitted of a fairly broad range of ideology, and it is wrong to claim its adherents marched in lock step, even with as important a Federalist as Hamilton.
Like the claim that Jefferson was a "liberal," this argument is hogwash.
Jefferson wouldn't be perceived as a "liberal" today simply because the issues he dealt with aren't the ones that define the political spectrum today. His positions WERE perceived as liberal and radical by late 18th century standards: among them, his support of the French Revolution, which was the very source of the terms Left vs. Right wing.
I will grant you, however, that those who retroject contemporary issues back into time say ludicrous things (e.g. "Jefferson would have supported gay marriage"). However, it's no more absurd than those who claim that Alexander Hamilton was a proto-Obama simply because he believed in implied powers rather than the compact theory.