The Democrats used to be Conservative, right?

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When I read history the Republican party- was the party of Lincoln. Lincoln was obviously a liberal. He was for Big Government, heavy taxes, and infringing on States Rights. The Democrats back then wanted less Government, and more Sovereignty of States. They wanted less taxes, supported free trade with Europe, and didn't like the idea of being told what to do.

So when you really look at it, how could the Democrats be considered liberal ? They were not liberal back then. The parties must have switched somewhere along the line.

What do Y'all think?

PS I am not a Democrat, I am a Tea Party supporter!

It's difficult to project modern terms and their associated definitions over 100 years into the past but effectively you're right.

That said, both parties had 'liberal' and 'conservative' wings that overlapped far more heavily than they have in recent memory.

I assume you're discussing from the US Civil War until pre-FDR?

Many democrats are conservative and many Republicans are liberal. In my state we elected a Republican governor who likes to raise taxes. He has raise many income taxes including the state tax, now he wants to raise the gas tax.

The "Blue Dog Democrats" are fiscally conservative.
http://bluedog.schrader.house.gov/about/

Many Democrats represent religious areas so they anti-abortion, or are pro-gun rights because they represent that area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Democrat

The political parties weren't really divided ideologically into conservative and liberal, it was more geographic. It wasn't that long ago when there were extremely conservative Democrats and very liberal Republicans, there was a lot of overlap. Larry McDonald was Democrat from Georgia and was the head of the John Birch Society, he was basically Ron Paul before there was Ron Paul.

You have to remember that in the nineteenth century "liberal" still meant "pro-liberty." The Jeffersonians were liberals, the abolitionists were liberals, Grover Cleveland was a liberal. Today those people look like libertarians or conservatives depending on what else they stood for. Lincoln was a mixed case, he primarily stood for liberal principles but took some questionable actions during the war. Late in the century when some people began agitating for a much more intrusive federal government they were then understood to be the opposite of liberals. (They called themselves Progressives, rather humorously in my opinion.)

If you're curious how the party of maximum liberty morphed into the party of maximum State power, there's a fascinating scholarly book on the subject:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/159813027 ... SY200_QL40

The Republicans were founded as an anti slavery party- the ultimate left wing cause of the time. Once the civil war and slavery were done and finished the GOP became the party of the Northern industrialists.

Lincoln's GOP successors were more heavy handed than Lincoln himself about conducting the post war Reconstruction. So Southern Whites rallied to the Democratic party out of regional bitterness inspired by the GOP.

There were progressive and conservative wings of both parties.

As the labor movement gained strength in the North labor gravitated to the Democrats, management to the GOP.

After WWII the Black Civil Rights Movement emerged. Its chief enemy was the Democratic Party. Its chief ally against the Democratic Party was...the Democratic Party! The former being the Southern wing, the later being the northern labor/New Deal wing.

Strom Thurmond even formed a breakaway "Dixiecrat" party for southern Whites (too bad it died out -there need to be two seperate conservative parties).

The Dixiecrats got reabsorbed into the Democrats. By the Sixties the Dems were associated with liberalism, and the GOP with conservatism, though there were many liberal GOPers in Congress, and the Dixiecrat wing was still in the Democratic party (despite George Wallace trying to pry it away into his third party). So there was a lot of reaching across the aisles. A lot of cooperation.

Then in 1994 came the off year election known as the "Republican Revolution"- which should be called "The Dixiecrat Extinction Event" because that was when all of the Southern White voters (who had been voting Democrat out of regional spite for over a centurey) finnally all defected to the GOP. Both parties became more solidly pure in ideology. And the battle lines hardened. And the party that defeated the South in the Civil War, and freed the slaves became the main party of Southern White voters.

Long story short: the Democratic party of the 20th Century was really two political parties:one liberal, and one extremely conservative. The Republican was one conservative party centered in the Northeast- but a slightly different brand of conservatism than the southern wing of the Dems..

Now Democrats are one liberal party, and the GOP is a party of two feuding brands of conservatism (libertarian vs Bible Thumping).

It should be recalled how Nixon was able to begin the process of attracting conservative white southern Democrats to the Republican party by playing to their resentment toward civil rights that had been championed by northern liberal Democrats, known as the Southern Strategy. Since then, the former southern Democrats set the tone for the Republican party, and was the beginning of the political divisiveness in American politics today.

It should be recalled how Nixon was able to begin the process of attracting conservative white southern Democrats to the Republican party by playing to their resentment toward civil rights that had been championed by northern liberal Democrats, known as the Southern Strategy. Since then, the former southern Democrats set the tone for the Republican party, and was the beginning of the political divisiveness in American politics today.