Title: How did the Republican Party become so conservative? | Salon.com
Headings: How did the Republican Party become so conservative?
How did the Republican Party become so conservative?
The Republican Party was founded to stop the expansion of slavery. So why is it so right-wing today?
1. The Grand Old Party actually is not the older of the two major political parties.
2. We can start in 1912.
3. The first milestone year in the history of the Republican Party's shift toward conservatism is 1932.
4. The second milestone year in the history of the Republican Party's shift toward conservatism is 1964.
5. Ronald Reagan's presidency was also a game-changer.
6. It is unclear whether Donald Trump has wrought another revolution within the Republican Party.
Matthew Rozsa

Content: We can start in 1912. The terms "liberal" and "conservative," it must be stressed, are somewhat anachronistic here. This is in part because ideology was not defined in the same way in the 19th and early 20th centuries as it is now — in part, because each party held positions that some would consider liberal and some that would be considered conservative; and in part, because both parties were more ideologically diverse than they are today. Advertisement: Advertisement
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Nevertheless, as a rule of thumb, it can be said that from the end of the Civil War to the years immediately before World War I, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to support national economic policies that invested in infrastructure and provided relief to the poor. They were also, as the party of Abraham Lincoln, more likely to decry discrimination against African-Americans, although they also abandoned the genuinely progressive racial policies of the post-Civil War era known as Reconstruction after selling out the freed slaves to elect Rutherford Hayes in 1876. At the same time, Republicans were often far less kind to immigrants than Democrats, more inclined toward overly-religious stances on social issues like prohibition, more likely to support imperialistic foreign policies and — on many occasions — were less sympathetic to labor unions, instead associating working class interests with issues like protective tariffs. The switch to Democrats being liberal and Republicans being conservative was gradual. Some historians place the Republican Party's turn to the right as early as 1912, when former President Theodore Roosevelt led a progressive bolt due to the perceived conservatism of incumbent President William H. Taft on a number of economic and social matters.