was it just happenstance that the parties ended up the way they were

[freepcrusher]

I mean if history had went slightly differently - is it possible that the republicans would be the liberal party and democrats the conservative ones? Look at the 1948 presidential election county map for instance. Both parties had there share of liberal and conservative areas voting for them.

It's also interesting to look at where the candidates were from. One was a Missouri-Kentucky ticket. The other was a New York (by way of Michigan) California ticket that included the future architect of liberal judicial decisions.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

The Republican Party has been the more conservative party for something like 150 years now.

Just go read the umpteen posts by North Carolina Yankee on the subject.

Or are you like your fellow D-IA avatar HenryWallaceVP and believe in muh party switching?

[freepcrusher]

The Republican Party has been the more conservative party for something like 150 years now.

Just go read the umpteen posts by North Carolina Yankee on the subject.

Or are you like your fellow D-IA avatar HenryWallaceVP and believe in muh party switching?

SNCY is someone who is right at some level but is the epitome of TLDR posting. It's not so much that Rs were conservative and Ds were liberal or vice versa. It's that you had conservatives and liberals in both parties.

It's difficult because there's no national referendum - but it would be interesting to see what would happen if there was a referendum on banning CPUSA. I wouldn't be surprised if otherwise wealthy republican areas like Bergen County had a higher % of no votes than western Kentucky (which at the time was heavily democratic voting).

[darklordoftech]

I suppose that, had the Dewey wing of the GOP won out, we could have ended up with Bloombergite Republicans vs. Manchinite Democrats.

[Sumner 1868]

I mean if history had went slightly differently - is it possible that the republicans would be the liberal party and democrats the conservative ones?

Yes, and the POD is actually quite easy - Hughes wins in 1916 while Democrats govern during the crash of 1929. The post-Depression GOP in this AH probably would have looked a lot like the LaFollette/Farmer-Labor coalition but with more blacks and urban poor.

[freepcrusher]

I suppose that, had the Dewey wing of the GOP won out, we could have ended up with Bloombergite Republicans vs. Manchinite Democrats.

that's good because it would have excluded the Eagle Forum/Concerned Women for America/Ted Cruz type of conservatives from respectable politics. Manchin (and Chris Smith from NJ) while culturally conservative, is not the same thing as what I just mentioned.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

On what grounds are you labelling areas as "liberal" and "conservative" lol? Based on how they vote now? Based on how you "perceive" these areas to have been? I expect you might point to a place like New England as this region aside the current GOP is winning most of the areas Dewey won in 1948, however at that time serving New England you had:
Senator Henry Styles Bridges (NH), Conservative Republican
Senator Ralph Flanders (VT), Conservative Republican
Senator Owen Brewster (ME), Conservative Republican
Senator Wallace H. White (ME), a GOP leader described as being Taft's "front man" and having a close relationship with the senator of Ohio as well as being well liked across the GOP caucus. On voteview his DW nominate is 0.323 indicating a solidly conservative voting record.
Senator Raymond E. Baldwin (CT), Conservative Republican
Senator Leverett Saltonstall (MA), another GOP leader who served as a mediator between the Conservatives and Moderates/"Liberals" in the party. On voteview his DW nominate is 0.175 indicating a moderately conservative voting record.
House Speaker Joseph Martin (MA), Conservative Republican.
Maybe just maybe, these areas voted for such Republicans because in 1948 they were more conservative than they are now?

As for your question, no it was not simply happenstance. The GOP's transition from a Protectionist bulwark in the late 19th/early 20th century to a more consensus oriented party in the mid 20th century to becoming the Neoliberal hive it is today was a pretty typical progression for a western Conservative Party. The Lafollette/Borah progressives in the early 20th century had very little influence over the GOP caucus (as indicated by their presidential runs during this period), and moderates (not Liberal or Radical ideologues) such as Dewey in the mid 20th century were again a minority who only received the support they did because they were viewed as electable at a time when the GOP was suffering greatly regarding electability.

[1978 New Wave skinny trousers]

The Republican Party has been the more conservative party for something like 150 years now.

Just go read the umpteen posts by North Carolina Yankee on the subject.

Or are you like your fellow D-IA avatar HenryWallaceVP and believe in muh party switching?

Oh ok, I guess that's why the National Liberal League were allies of the Republicans while the multiple "Conservative Parties" of the South violently opposed the GOP.

"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 (1888).

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

The Republican Party has been the more conservative party for something like 150 years now.

Just go read the umpteen posts by North Carolina Yankee on the subject.

Or are you like your fellow D-IA avatar HenryWallaceVP and believe in muh party switching?

Oh ok, I guess that's why the National Liberal League were allies of the Republicans while the multiple "Conservative Parties" of the South violently opposed the GOP.

"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 (1888).

I guess that's why Nathaniel Banks bolted the GOP to participate in the "Liberal Republican Party" which was... allied with the Democrats.

Anyway, all of this has been repeated to death, all the arguments supporting your position and all those opposing your position, and you and I have better things to talk about.

[SingingAnalyst]

Hypothetically, it is certainly possible; however, there is a reason why, at least in the West, (Europe and the Americas), the parties have ended up how they are.

I consider Ronald Reagan the one individual most responsible for how the parties are today.

Going into the 1980 election, it was not at all clear that the Democratic Party would become the part of the urban and educated, with the GOP being the party of less educated rural whites. The 1976 Presidential election had the Democratic standard-bearer doing better among conservative, religious, rural Southern whites than in San Francisco or Boston. The 1978 governor's races in Michigan and Massachusetts would have party breakdowns by county and city/town roughly the opposite of today (in Michigan, Washtenaw was Gov. Milliken's best county, followed by Ingham and Oakland while Oscoda was his challenger's best county; in Massachusetts, the GOP gubernatorial candidate won Amherst (85%), Brookline (73.4%), Newton, Cambridge, and Lexington while the victorious Democrat carried Lowell and Boston proper).

Ronald Reagan's candidacy and campaign changed all that. Reagan won two ginormous (to use a word that wasn't around in 1980 or 1984) victories by running as a religious, social, and economic conservative, albeit an optimistic one. With a formula like that, the GOP wasn't about to re-embrace its Dewey-Taft-Rockefeller-Harold Stassen wings. Likewise, more recently, the Democrats have seen (with Barack Obama) that they can win without the South and without religious and social conservatives; so they, too, will stick with what has been a winning formula for them. (Two problems with the GOP are that, first, no successor has had nearly the charisma of Reagan and, two, much of their base is getting old and dying--they are not appealing to the young).

I suspect the parties are the way they are for complex historical reasons involving, among other things, the role of religion in public life-- as well as race, gender, sexuality, and class.