1860 politics! This will come as a surprise to you, but the country has changed in in the last 159 years.
In 1860, the Democratic Party was the conservative party and the Republican Party was the progressive party. The platform for each party slowly switched.
" Why Did the Democratic and Republican Parties Switch Platforms?
Eric Rauchway, professor of American history at the University of California, Davis, pins the transition to the turn of the 20th century, when a highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan blurred party lines by emphasizing the government's role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power — traditionally, a Republican stance.
Republicans didn't immediately adopt the opposite position of favoring limited government. "Instead, for a couple of decades, both parties are promising an augmented federal government devoted in various ways to the cause of social justice," Rauchway wrote in a 2010 blog post for the Chronicles of Higher Education. Only gradually did Republican rhetoric drift to the counterarguments. The party's small-government platform cemented in the 1930s with its heated opposition to the New Deal.""
https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
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