Hamilton, Alexander
1755–1804

Hamilton was the founders' strongest advocate for federal power, banking regulation, manufacturing, urban-commercial pragmatism, and pro-immigration (he himself arrived in NYC at 17 as a Caribbean immigrant); his Federalist Papers are the definitive constitutional defense of energetic federal government and a sustained warning against demagogues. Cornyn matches Hamilton substantially better than Paxton: the CHIPS Act and industrial-policy posture is direct Hamiltonian industrial-policy lineage, his Senate-Banking-Committee record on financial regulation aligns with Hamilton's banking-regulation framework, and his consistent institutionalism is the anti-demagogue posture Hamilton built the Federalist Papers around. Paxton's populist-demagogic mode is exactly what Hamilton warned against, and the personal-attack campaign style would horrify the man who died in a duel triggered by exactly such attacks.