In the abstract I would like to reduce illegal immigration, but I thought a multi-billion dollar wall was a stupid way to do it when the primary vehicle for illegal immigration is actually overstaying a visa. Repurposing allocated defense funding to wall construction isn't in any way conservative in my book. Illegal immigration just has so little of an impact on my life that I never much cared. I am in favor of enforcing immigration laws in a humane way and a pragmatic solution to deal with the millions of people that are here and won't ever be leaving. I liked Bush's pathway to citizenship in 2005ish, but it died a fast and brutal death. I also believe in a healthy legal immigration system to promote work visas that improve our economy, which Trump took an axe to during his time. Hopefully Biden will slowly rebuild that.

Reducing regulations to promote growth is also kind of an empty platitude that I agree with in the abstract but don't support if it involves things like CO2 emissions and other environmental concerns. To be fair, climate change was an area where I had already split from the GOP well before 2016. I also haven't seen anything to indicate that the regulation changes under Trump made a lick of difference in actually promoting growth. The economy was humming along nicely with steady improvement for essentially the entire decade pre-COVID. I would challenge anybody to look at a graph of GDP or unemployment and find where Trump took office if you removed the dates on the X-axis.

You and I just disagree on the importance of energy independence. I'm a free market globalist to the core and just never cared about whether we drill for enough oil and natural gas on US soil to sustain ourselves. Again, not a high priority for me. Frankly if we're talking about fracking here or importing from a less damaging approach, I'll take the less damaging approach. I'd much rather see someone promote nuclear and renewable power in the US to reduce our carbon consumption for power, which wasn't happening under Trump either.

Likewise avoiding engagements in foreign wars sounds lovely, but is an abstraction. I guess I'm a neocon on global affairs, where I believe that the world works the best when the US is a superpower that exerts a lot of pressure on foreign countries to promote democracy and human rights. We should use economics and diplomacy first, but I'm not opposed to force if needed. My distaste for Obama's foreign policy is outweighed only by how disastrous Trump's was on Russia, North Korea, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc.

I would be in favor of those actions on elections if they are applied evenly between states, which certainly isn't the case at the moment. There are many states that do a great job, like Washington and Florida, with vote by mail, while others like New York and Georgia are a mess. Your eligibility or ease of voting shouldn't depend on where you live. Likewise I believe anyone arguing that election results shouldn't be trusted should have evidence to back it up, not just generalized concerns. Despite the differences in voting protocols between states, study after study has shown that fraud does not affect the outcome of elections and is exceedingly rare. "Good governance" is telling people the truth on that particular fact, rather than using rumors and misinformation to further your own political cause.

As a formerly "true conservative," my definition of conservatism was that America should be Reagan's "shining city on the hill" and set the example for the rest of the world on how a government should run in terms of balancing the budget, corruption, democratic elections, telling the truth, and human rights. Up until the GOP turned into the Trump party, I thought they were better at that on the whole. Maybe I was wrong all along, but I know they aren't now.

I'm fairly pragmatic on actual policy, preferring to solve problems as they come up. You can tax your way to a balanced budget or cut spending or a mixture of the two and I won't much care. I just hate burning a huge amount of money on interest every year and allowing that to crowd out future discretionary spending. I generally think small government solutions work better, but I sure didn't see Trump's policies as solutions to very much. I'll promote Biden's policies when I agree with him and say when I disagree, but I am very confident he is going to do a better job of making America the "shining city on the hill" than Trump was.