One represents the culture, the industry and progressive spirit of the North, and the other affiliates with the South and finds its main support in all that is left of an extinct system of barbarism.
Frederick Douglass on the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, in 1888. Doesn't that seem like it could've just as easily been said today, except in reverse? A switch happened whether you like it or not. I don't see how you can read that quote, then compare it to today's political parties, and conclude otherwise.
Aside from the coalitions, which were bound to change anyway as America's demographics and the dynamics of the electoral college shifted wildly, we've generally stuck to the fundamentals. The conservatives benefit from reduced turnout and the liberals benefit from high turnout. The conservatives are the nationalists and the liberals are the "other" (sectionalists and internationalists). The conservative party wants to stick to the Anglosphere and the liberal party wants to pivot to Asia. The conservatives still benefit, more or less, from the Protestant moral panic (although it's a tiny minority at this point) and the liberals are the "freewheeling wets". The conservative party is more for protectionism and the liberal party is more for free trade, although trade is something that changes given the nature of the economy (agrarian, industrial, post-industrial). Despite the cultural division making their positions less apparent ("coastal elitists" and all), the conservatives always have a base with the aristocracy and the bottom of the caste system always carves out a place in the liberal faction. The middle class- the suburbanites- are always swinging back and forth.
They didn't "switch platforms", because we're no longer having debates about whether or not to continue slavery or industrialize. As new debates came up, the parties adopted new issues and the coalitions adapted.
Sure, Lincoln wanted to end slavery. He also wanted to ship the slaves back to Africa and make the US a white ethnostate. And of course Eisenhower stood for the Little Rock Nine. It was for the supremacy of federal power over state power and to give capitalism a human face as the Soviets watched, not necessarily civil rights. The liberal myth that the parties switched places, ensuring a long continuous heritage of "good guys", is another attempt to absolve the country and its institutions of their sins instead of celebrating actual progressive icons like Eugene Debs and Malcolm X.
I'm a leftist who would disagree. There are plenty of progressive icons from the Civil War period worth celebrating like Thaddeus Stevens, who combined progressive racial views with genuinely leftist and pro-worker economic positions. Although I consider myself a leftist rather than a liberal, the fact is that the United States has never had a leftist major party. Liberalism is often the best option we've got, as it is better than the alternative (conservatism), and in the 19th century the Republicans were often a better vehicle for liberalism than the Democrats. Also, you mention that the conservatives "always have a base with the aristocracy", but the only genuine aristocrats in American history, the Southern planter elite class descended from the English Cavaliers, were Democrats. Yes, many were Whigs and Federalists before they were Democrats, but that doesn't change the fact that in the latter 19th century they were Democrats.
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
From a business perspective, Rauchway pointed out, the loyalties of the parties did not really switch. "Although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places," he wrote, "their core supporters don't — which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it's just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don't."
In other words, earlier on, businesses needed things that only a bigger government could provide, such as infrastructure development, a currency and tariffs. Once these things were in place, a small, hands-off government became better for business.
Worth pointing out that the business wing of the party still favors big gov't when it benefits them. Defense contractors are a good example of this, big agra and their subsidies and then of course big oil and their tax breaks.
You keep talking about this "big gov't" vs. "small gov't" dichotomy, but I think you're missing the broader point. Government size is and never has been at the root of the conservative-liberal struggle. Classical liberals supported liberty, freedom, and equality first and foremost. That they often happened to align themselves with support for a smaller government is no surprise, as it was an age where much of the West was still ruled by autocracies. But they didn't
always ally themselves to the notion of small government. In the American context, the most blatantly egregious violation of liberty, freedom, and equality was done at the level of the local and state governments, rather than the federal government. It existed not because the federal government had too much power, but because it had too little. I am of course talking about slavery. When the Republicans increased the size of government with their Reconstruction amendments, there was nothing conservative about it: they were pursuing Jeffersonian ends via Hamiltonian means.
