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Well, no. I don't know what you mean by "conservative project" but conservatives don't simply register the past as "idyllic" as a rule. There's plenty of bad stuff in there! Communism, Nazism, the origin point of modern conservatism was Burke's response to the French Revolution.
The point is that conservatives point to pro-social behaviors, practices, and traditions that over hundreds and thousands of years have repeatedly shown themselves to be unquestionably beneficial to humanity and society. These are the very concepts, ideas, and traditions we seek to conserve. We don't believe in radical and accelerated experimentation with these. Within living memory, we went from "boys shouldn't hit girls" to arguing that more boys should be allowed to pummel girls for money.
Then I'd argue they weren't people of genuine faith, but scrupulous virtue signalers who used organized religious practices - and voiced adherence of them - to assuage their guilt for being shitbags. This is extremely common in evangelical circles and in the online RadTrad and OrthoBro spaces. It is astonishing how people who truly, deeply live the principles of their faith come across as intensely normal, pleasant, and happy people.
This is not a core conservative claim unless you add in "should" between "mothers" and "love"
See above.
Ah, well, credit where it is due. I think this is probably a core conservative claim and one of the big wedges between conservatives and "libertarians" (although, personally, I find the term "libertarian" to be close to meaningless.) For instance, one can't help but smirk at the fact that the "Rational" community has re-invented the concept of Satan as Moloch....when Moloch is literally a Biblical demon.
I'm not saying those are core claims, just what garden-variety conservatives frequently say at the dinner table. I don't consider anecdotes like justawoman's to be refutations of serious conservative thought. But they are not "trolling".
I'm trying to avoid debating the entirety of conservatism, but that's obviously a No True Christian fallacy.
Other ideologies have their own idealizations of an imagined past or an imagined future, of course. And simplistic stuff they say at the dinner table.
What's the sample that you're drawing from? Since I mostly have experience from churches and similar, and those tend to have pretty good families as far as I can tell.
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Aren’t weekly church attendees doing much better, and doing better for others? Doesn’t seem ridiculous or fallacious to note that people who actually practice Christianity tend to become better people, while those who just occasionally talk about it don’t.
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