Republican Party's Becoming Part of Right: Why?

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When the Republican Party was founded, in many ways, it was to the left of the Democratic Party. The Republicans opposed the expansion of slavery (although they certainly were not egalitarians). During Reconstruction, they were the party of freed slaves in the South, and African Americans were even elected to Congress under the Republican banner! Until Ronald Reagan, Democrats in the South were conservative (some still are) and often racist and xenophobic (the Republicans have pocketed that demographic). Teddy Roosevelt had a reputation as a trust buster who fought the excesses of monopolistic businesses.

With Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democrats made one of their first major steps to the left: with social welfare programs and government work projects to get the economy moving out of the Great Depression. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson began the Democrats' embrace of the Civil Rights Movement and support for African Americans and later women. Medicare also came into being around this time. Republicans by and large opposed all these things until they were so set that few bothered challenging them anymore (i.e., conservatism).

Why this ideological turn?

JFK and LBJ supported civil rights and the end to Jim Crow. This basically flipped the southern states from Democrat to Republican.

Consider this quote from Kevin Phillips, one of Nixon's political strategists:

Becoming?