How are they determining “conservative”?
Self-identified as “conservative”?
Or are there a list of issues, e.g.: taxation, social issues (pro-life, freedom of religion, no gay perverts in bathrooms, right to not celebrate gay “marriages”), states rights issues, liberty-related issues?
For example, I would consider free-trade a conservative value (assuming the trade is truly free and not protectionist on the other side as is the case with China), etc.
Similarly, protectionism (of certain politically connected industries) is typically a liberal faux populist response to protect big labor and ultra-rich special interests (e.g., steel back in the days of Carnegie).
In short, kind of meaningless, unless one defines “conservative”
Not true. Protectionism for US industry goes all the way back to the founding fathers. The Republicans of the industrial revolution from the Civil War up through McKinley were protectionist. Coolidge was protectionist. So was Ike. So was Reagan. So is Trump. So are all other real conservatives.
If a politician is against the best interests of most US citizens, just what is he/she pretending to conserve?
The establishment Republicans since Teddy Roosevelt have been liberal progressives; not conservatives. The "social conservatives" are mostly nanny-state theocrats; not conservatives.
Nonsense. The heart of Conservatism has always been an “American 1st” mindset and a deep suspicions of foreign entanglements. “Managed Trade” often wrongly call Free Trade, is at heart a Liberal Globalist position. It base on the notion that trade policy can be written, at the US expense, to “mange” economic ebbs and flows world wide and thus promote global stability.
I remember back when being conservative included supporting limited government.
that’s where I disagree with you “free trade” is not conservatism ....free trade is currently practiced is Progressive/libertarianism
the founding fathers used tariffs extensively... in fact it was the main Federal tax mechanism providing all government revenues of this country for the first hundred years ....
Unfettered by tariffs, “free trade” was a progressive idea promoted by Wilson Woodrow... and it was the reason he put in the progressive income tax as an alternative means to fund the government vs the Tariff system
if you want to argue against tariffs and for unfettered free trade by tariffs argue with the founding fathers and how the Constitution was written originally written