When did the parties switch platforms?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

One thing that has changed is that elites have become more liberal and thus populists are more often than not found on the right and Conservatism in general has taken on a more populist flair. You see this in the attempts to impeach justices in PA for instance.

The correct term may be “plebeian” (as opposed to “proletarian”).

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It should probably be noted that the "urbanism" of the pre-New Deal GOP is probably over-stated. They no doubt wanted an industrial, capitalist society and clung to some idea of "progress", but I have little doubt that at every step of the way they probably "tut-tutted" the morally ruinous aspects of urban life. As early as the Civil War you had Republicans in professional positions that were a class and a world apart from the unwashed masses of the urban proletariat that their desired system necessitated and created.

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The below is senseless rambling.

As regards the early--let's use the working term "liberalism"--of the GOP, this probably requires some creative analysis. Prior to the civil war, you had two classes of elites--industrialists of the North and planters of the South; both were "conservative" of some sort owing to their class disposition. They nevertheless had opposing interests. Slaveowners of the South, separated from finance and industry, formulated a populist program to rally the masses in opposition to their rivals in the North. This was at one time led by true ideologues like Jefferson who likely bought what they sold, but, we might speculate, became more and more simple "window dressing" on a more and more plainly parasitic and unjust system. The North, to its credit, eventually--not immediately--found its business interests to contradict the business interests of the South. This was combined with moral rhetoric--the two perhaps developed independently, but in reaction to the same phenomenon. But in any case, as industry grew, by necessity it was the rising or ascendant force. The Civil War thus marked in some sense a second "bourgeois revolution" for the country. The Republican Party included not only these industrialists, but obvious reform elements--Puritans, liberals, even socialists. Nevertheless, as Northern industry and the Bloody Flag consolidated in the 1870's, the GOP continued its tradition that it inherited from the Whigs and the Federalists. In some alternate universe, we might be now discussing the quasi-socialist revolution that occurred, wherein a worker's ascendancy quickly followed a liberal ascendancy. That said, for whatever reason--call them historical preconditions--God and Capital were well situated to continue their reign in the coalition of the North, rather than give way to a labor movement.