They had a principled position, but one that was lost at sea from the first, because they were following the lead of people who didn't want to pay for a first-rate Army and Navy, who wanted to engage in "internationalism" in diplomacy to sign arms-limitation treaties like the Treaty of London, but then refuse the responsibility of resisting with armed force the advances of totalitarianism when the diplomatic pie crusts began to be eaten up.
So the America Firsters were really following the tax-dodging Chamber types I call "wooden-gun Republicans" (like Cal Coolidge, Warren Harding, Marc Hanna , Wm. McKinley and other "Old Guard" [anti-Mooser/Mugwump GOPers] types who'd put up McKinley, Benjamin Harrison, and James G. Blaine for President) in articulating and spinning out arguments why they should reject "overspending" on defense.
Time never passed them by, because they were dunces of the Chamber/Four Hundred Families crowd, the Yacht Club, and never understood their own party's politics; so they were never in time to begin with, but just sort of floating around in some interdimensional void like Captain Kirk in his "lost in space" episode.
"Look, look -- there he is!"
"Oh, wait -- it's not Captain Kirk, it's only Ron Paul."
"Oh, never mind, then."
I agree. I wrote a paper on the isolationists prior to WWII. What was interesting to me was that the disparity of the groups and the many different motives for them to come to essentially the same conclusion. Many of the original isolationists believed America was too good to get involved in the world’s problems. Ron Paul believes we (the USA) are not good enough as a nation to involve ourselves in the world. When terrorists attack happen, it’s a just retribution for our failure to abide by his guidance, he’s saying. Pat Buchanan is much the same. In their minds, the USA is a no good bully.
“I think Ron Paul is one of those old isolationists left over from 1940 who, like the late Sen. Borah, opposed U. S. involvement in World War II.”
He’s an isolationist who belongs to the “Blames the victim first” crowd.