Elections since 1896 when Democrat was more conservative then Republican

[Mechaman]

Zero, and zero before that.  Sorry.

What?

Stephen Douglas wasn't more conservative than Lincoln?

Seymour wasn't more conservative than Grant?

Do you know ANYTHING about history?

Unless you're making the outrageously revisionist and self-righteous claim that opposing slavery is a strictly liberal position (especially when so many of its earliest opponents were of the most conservative religious denominations such as the Quakers and were almost always more fiscally conservative than its defenders), how was Lincoln more "liberal" than Douglas?  Anyone with an ounce of historical knowledge knows that supporting a high tariff was a conservative, pro-business position until about the '40s when the United States had a powerful enough economy on a global scale to benefit from free trade and the GOP of Lincoln's day was clearly more conservative on issues like immigration and prohibition (and morality in general, just like the hated Religious Right of today).  If you're going to make the idiotically simplistic argument that "big government" is always inherently liberal, then I guess Bill Clinton was more conservative than Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush?

I'm going to go ahead and guess you're about 21 and your knowledge of historical politics is limited to the AP Gov. class you took in high school and bias-confirming partisan "historians."

That isn't really relevant to whether or not Lincoln is to the left of Douglas, given that Lincoln was not conservative on either issue, regardless of what the majority of his party felt on the issue.

And referring to the early GOP as 'liberal' or 'conservative' is really dumb, given as it was founded as a single-issue anti-slavery party with literally nothing else uniting the party, its members ranged from liberal to conservative to radical to religious fundamentalist to Marxist to nativist to immigrant. It'd be like if the modern day Green, Libertarian, and Constitution parties merged to form a single-issue anti-war party and trying to assign an ideology more coherent than 'anti-war' to that party.

Yeah mostly this.

ROcky, I mostly agree with you on historical analysis, but really the early GOP coalition was so all over the map that trying to pin down Lincoln and Grant as on the whole "conservative" just doesn't work.  It would only be by Post-Reconstruction when a lot of the "liberal" and even some "radical" Republicans were forced out of the coalition that the conservative vs. liberal divide began to take shape between the two parties.

[Mechaman]

The idea that the parties "switched places" is one of the most irksome ideas to me. The reality is much more complicated and you need to know the historical contexts of the eras in question. I think this simplistic idea comes from the guilt modern Democrats feel knowing that our party once had a large faction dedicated to preserving slavery and objecting to civil rights.

Sincerely,

A high school history teacher.

You and me both NerdyBohemian.

The ignorance particularly on labor and economic issues is quite telling.  The assumption seems to be that because Cleveland was a "Bourbon Democrat" which historians generally call a "conservative" that the party as a whole was very conservative and the Republicans were liberals and left wingers.  What generally gets missed is that Cleveland was a Democrat elected in an era of Republican dominance in the White House and was able to get as much success as he did because he had a wide appeal to *shocker* Republican voters who were both pro-gold and in favor of reform politics.  He was Bill Clinton, not Ronald Reagan.

Compare and contrast that with the agrarian radicals, silverite westerners, labor radicals, Georgists, Fenian Nationalists, and other assorted very liberal elements of the Democratic coalition.  No way in flip you could describe a lot of these people as "conservative", particularly for the times.

Teddy Roosevelt seems like a "liberal" until you actually read up on the times and what the opposition was selling by that point.  As it is, even Alton Parker was arguing in favor of an eight hour work day.

Relevant article:

http://www.city-journal.org/story.php?id=1464

Roosevelt seems very liberal until you consider that his rhetoric about cooperation between business and labor in 1904 was being pushed for by "old fashioned Jackson Democrats" in the 1880s.  Also, even Thomas Jefferson supported anti-monopoly legislation.  So yeah, I guess supporting something a Democratic Republican supported in 1797 suddenly makes him an amazing liberal Republican.. . .  .  sheesh.

[Mechaman]

There were very few substantive differences between Roosevelt and Parker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1904#Campaign

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It's just as easy to argue that Parker was to the left of Roosevelt as it is to argue Roosevelt was to the left of Parker.

Mostly this.

You really have to consider where the Democratic Party as a whole was at the time before blanketly assuming Parker was to Roosevelt's right.  By 1904 Roosevelt was at best saying that labor and capital needed to do a better job of working with each other, something (as I pointed out earlier in this thread) "conservative" Democrats had been saying for decades.  And that is before I address the man's paternalistic nationalism, which was obviously a very conservative driven mentality.  Further, as much as everyone wants to use the put down of the Pullman Strike as some evidence that Cleveland was to the far right of his Republican opponents, some context is very freaking necessary.  For instance, in the 1892 Election Cleveland was helped in the Midwest (of all places) largely due to labor unrest at the suppressive actions taken against unions during Harrison's presidency (this really helped the Democrats sell their free trade agenda, given that protectionist policies did not yield benefits for many workers at the time).

And further, his actions in regards to Pullman weren't unpopular among Republicans.  Even Samuel Gompers approved of Cleveland's handling of the Pullman Strike.  Cleveland's handling of the strike was defended as a just response against union strikes until 1935 and even Ted Roosevelt claimed Cleveland as an influence when deciding how to deal with the Antracite Coal strikers.  What actually damaged Cleveland in regards to the strike was the impact it had on his own party's voting base (particularly in the South and the West where Populist sentiments were particularly high), many whom sat out the 1894 House elections (thus leading to a huge landslide in favor of the Republicans).  Few of these voters saw the GOP (save for maybe William Borah and Robert M. Lafollette and a few other prairie populists) as a better alternative.  And really the one really big contention that Gilded Age Republicans had with Bourbon Democrats was over trade (Republicans were huge protectionists and the Bourbons, like other Democrats, were largely in favor of freer trade), which William McKinley made a huge stink of over when he ran for president in 1896.  He also had the foresight to abandon moralistic issues (ie, Prohibition and immigration restrictions) and adopt *shocker again* conciliatory language with "respectable" unions like the Knights of Labor in order to win a landslide mandate in the Northern states against Bryan's perceived silverite radicalism.  Basically, McKinley became an imperialist protectionist version of Cleveland and his successor Teddy Roosevelt was able to adopt a much more successful and opportunistic version of it.

So yeah, history books.  Read 'em.