Isolationism (rooted in a verrrry different era of US History when Washington was nursing a very vulnerable infant nation was one thing and it did not last very long since we got into it with the Barbary pirates not so long thereafter and had another war with the Brits in 1812.
I am much more of a devotee of Andrew Jackson than ever I will be of Alexander Hamilton. The business "interests" have been corrupting the USA since Hamilton's time as Treasury Secretary. First, the public had the sense to reject "Federalist" Party power once and for all at the political expense of John Adams who was a far better man than Hamilton. Then Aaron Burr removed Hamilton altogether by firing a fortunate shot at Weehawken, NJ. Jackson hammered these SOBs and their "National Bank" scheme into the earth after Jefferson had regrettably failed to do the honors earlier.
The greedypig government centralizing enemies of the constitution raged at Jackson, had their Senate censure him and did every kabuki dance imaginable to reclaim their lost economic dominating central bank. The late unpleasantness between the states occurred when Lincoln was elected against no less than three essentially Democratic candidates, any of which would have been far better for the American and for the nearly 700,000 young Americans butchered i Lincoln's war. Then Lincoln was "martyred" and the predecessors of today's donor class big government ran around the country waving his bloody shirt for the gulls of the next generation or two. "Pay no attention to the thieves behind the curtain and remember that our Father Abraham was murdered by their enemies."
Then the Democrat Party went temporarily bad with Woodrow Wilson, enactment of the federal income tax amendment and creation of the Federal Reserve Bank and somewhat permanently bad abandoning the small government Al Smith approach in favor of FDR's nomination an big government policies.
Hamilton and Henry Clay ad Abraham Lincoln were now as represented in the Democrat Party as in the Republican Party. Fast forward a few decades and even the FDR style policies of LBJ were not enough to satisfy the rabid left and they handed George McGovern and his fellow reds in their ranks the permanent keys to what had previously been the "party of the working man" and a party that previously believed in flat out winning necessary wars.
Meanwhile, the Republicans, not to be outdone by much, nominated Tricky Dick, who brought in the supine foreign policy of Henry Kissinger, second rate SCOTUS justices, and porking up Muffie's trust fund uber alles. And Nixon fed Agnew to the lions and then begat Feckless Ford. Reagan, who was certain to lose as an impossible right wing nut, at least according to TRUMP!!!'s fellow Manhattan elitists, gave the GOP a temporary respite that it did not deserve and won 93 of a possible 100 states in two elections and came closer to carrying New York City, losing by 27,000 votes, than any GOP candidate since Calvin Coolidge in 1924. Te GOP-E was shocked!, shocked! and has spared no effort since to make sure that there not be another philistine peasant like that Gipper fellow occupying their penthouse, errr outhouse, no make that White House!
There are MANY litmus tests for conservative priorities and AMONG them are: closing off all but necessary immigration for the foreseeable future until we have digested those already admitted illegally or sent them home, the babies, guns, marriage, a thoroughly restored and enhanced dominant military capable and willing to absolutely intimidate and crush this nation's enemies whenever they may have the nerve to show their heads, putting an end to these infernal sovereignty-sapping trade sellouts that are destroying the lives of ordinary Americans, dealing a death blow to Islamofascism and Iran's nuke program and the suicide bombings and the rest, restoring civility in our public life in manners, language and moral behavior and subjecting our nation's leaders to high standards in those respects.
Now, charitably speaking, TRUMP!!! does not seem enthusiastic for most of those priorities since he is nothing vaguely resembling a conservative. He is credible on combating excess immigration (and maybe even building THE WALL, but we will pay for it, which is OK since we want it. He seems credible on guns which is a bit strange given his Manhattan residence. He is credible on giving a LOT better treatment to veterans and he will probbly be willing to spend some money on the military restoration but not enough to get the job done.
Other than those issues, many of them important, he will be anything but a conservative in office. He has always been a pro-abort, including support even for "partial birth" abortion. He then insults our intelligence by claiming to have been converted on the subject while bouncing the AMAZING!!! child of a friend in his lap. Had he never bounced his own children in his lap? Or were they just ordinary? Do merely ordinary children also deserve to live? How about Down's Syndrome kids? Kids affected by Cerebral Palsy? Clearly, he has not thought these lies through to their logical conclusions and clearly, on life matters, he is a charlatan and no conservative.
Morals? Civility? His language in this campaign is unprecedented for vulgarity by a POTUS candidate. He incorporated a striptease joint in his Atlantic City casino and STILL managed to bankrupt a casino! Casinos mint money. It is what they do and what they are.
Might do away with trade deals? Isn't The Donald known primarily as a wheeler dealer and prides himself on The Art of the Deal? Isn't he the only GOP POTUS candidate to predict that he can make "deals with Schmucky hewmer and Nancy elosi and Harry Reid (whose term will end before Inauguration Day in 2017?) What kind of deals will be made with such sorry excuses for Americans? What more will actual conservatives be expected to give u to the Deal God?
I can pick your candidate apart with ease but, by all means, let us recognize that The Donald is The Donald and keep this debate on an honest plane. That requires a preliminary abandonment of the pretense that TRUMP!!! is any kind of conservative. Some of us have been conservative through many long years, some fat and some lean, and we aren't about to be good little lemmings running off the cliff for Mr. Bluster.
If Mr. Bluster is a metaphor for American Conservatism, then it is no wonder that our nation is in such crisis and that the mobs in the streets fancy themselves "conservatives" in service to The Donald.
If ever I should "withdraw" a claim, I will be sure to let my critics know that specifically. Draw no inferences. Make no assumptions.
The Barbary Pirates war was in no way a departure from the Washington/Jefferson foreign policy. When Jefferson was Washington's Secretary of State, he defined the common policy in terms of "punishing the first insult." No body simply suggested that we were too weak to act when our interests demanded. That was not my point; nor was it a fact.
Read the "debate," I published: Washington/Bush Debate, not primarily for the fact that the Founders generally opposed intervention in other lands' internal affairs--although that certainly, by any use of language, is the Conservative position. No, but for the clear, clean grasp that Washington showed of the human psychological factors that are really ageless.
Jeb's older brother was so confused, at the time, in trying to outline his concept of an American mission, that in his speech he used the term "Freedom" in six different and conflicting senses; while Washington's explanations went not just to the argument that people now try to refute--the reliance on the distance from Europe--but to the effects on the psychology on the home front, in getting involved in picking favorites and enemies, as fragmenting our cohesive spirit. (Of course, the converse would be true in other lands; where our perceived claim of a right to change cultures, has proven an enormous recruiting tool to our enemies. And consider the four generations of folly in British policy in Ireland.)
Trump does not have the developed clarity of expression that Washington displayed; but his dust-up with Jeb on the last debate where Jeb tried to take him on, showed far greater and far more Conservative clarity than Jeb could manage.