[William McKinley]

I disagree with you. There have been conservatives for as long as this country has been around. Adams was a conservative, for example. So was Harrison, and so was McKinley, and so was Taft, and so was Robert A. Taft, and so was Reagan. There may not have been a so-called conservative movement identified by the name, but the mindset, and the manner of thought which identifies a conservative, has been around the whole time. The only way one comes up with it not being around is by defining conservatism as the narrow bit of political inclination exemplified by extreme isolationism.

[inquest]

There have been conservatives for as long as this country has been around.

That's basically what I said in my post. To wit: "Prior to [the 20th century], pretty much the whole American public [that is, of both political parties] apart from a few socialist radicals was conservative - at least going by the six tenets you posted on that other thread." (You may have misunderstood me when I said the Republicans were no more conservative than Democrats. I wasn't referring to modern Democrats, but to Democrats of that time period.) My point was not that 19th-century Republican administrations weren't conservative; my point was that they weren't the sole indicators of what American conservatism was.

As conservatism was the guiding philosophy of American political life at the time, and as the limited and largely unsuccessful attempts by certain Republican administrations to expand our influence overseas apparently didn't meet with much broad-based support at home, I feel comfortable in concluding that such inclinations on their part did not represent, to any sizable degree, what conservatism was understood to mean.