How did the Republican party become the conservative party and the Democrats the liberal party?

During the Civil War it was the other way around.Most southerners were Democrats and most northerners were Republican, now it's the other way around.What happened?How did the Republican party become the conservative party and the Democrats the liberal party?
Two things: Johnson in the 60s (especially the civil rights bill of 1964) and Reagan in the 80s.





Johnson broke the 'solid South' for the Democratic Party (he admitted that the civil rights legislation had ';lost the South for a generation'; for the Democrats), and Reagan, the consummate actor and self-made Cold Warrior, won it solidly for the Republicans. There were other factors involved, including demographic factors (the swelling population of the white South) and the growing political influence of white evangelical Christians.How did the Republican party become the conservative party and the Democrats the liberal party?
The change came with the passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1965. The terms 'Liberal and Conservative'; weren't used to describe a person political beliefs much before 1976 when Ronald Reagan ran and began using the (ahem) 'L'; Word.





Southerners were predominantly Democrats from the time of Andrew Jackson (1820) until 1976. The Republican Abe Lincoln was president when the south seceded and when the Civil War ended in 1865, confederates came back to the US as Democrats. During one election, a repatriated confederate was asked who he would vote for and uttered the famous line '; I sooner vote for a yellow dog than vote for a Republican'; .





From the time of reconstruction until the 1960's the old Democratic Party was coalition of mid-west farmers, northern labor, and segregationist 'conservative' southerners.





When the the Voting Rights Acts and Civil Rights became in law in the mid 1960's, southern racist Democrats left the party and joined the Republicans who welcomed a block of voters who could restore the political power the GOP lost in 1932 when FDR defeated Hoover. Union workers in the north fell into the GOP column in 1980 when Reagan defeated Carter.





Since then the GOP has been a coalition of bigotted paranoid union retiree's and racist rednecks while the Democratic Party has became the idealistic party in the manner of Lincoln, Jefferson, Kennedy and FDR.


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The Republican Party became the conservative party after the Civil War, when they saw how much money they were making on armaments and railroads, and sold out the reason for their existence, improving the lives of black Americans.





The Democratic Party became the liberal party in bits and pieces, with the work of William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson (but only in his first term -- his second was dangerously conservative), and Al Smith. It was in 1932 that, with a few conservative choices, they nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and were on their way. The process was completed in 1963 and 1964, when John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson said that civil rights was more important than keeping the South in the party, and the vast majority of the conservative Southern Democrats became conservative Southern Republicans.
If you are asking the question in relative terms then the Republican Party is the more Conservative of the two parties, Democrat and Republican. Although I would hardly call the party Conservative. What happened was FDR, social security and the move towards federalism. Democrats have consistently been more in favor more and more federal government programs and federal interference in state matters.
The Whigs became the Republican Party. The Democrat-Republicans became Democrats.





The Republican Party of today voted overwhelmingly in support of the Civil Rights legislation. Let's not forget Al Gore, Sr. and JFK voted against Civil Rights legislation in 1956 under Eisenhower.
thats an overly simplified way to look at it. people who live in urban areas are more likely to be liberal, and those who live everywhere else are more likely to be conservative.
The southerners quit the democratic party when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act. Northerners wised up.
Reagan happened.
TIME happened.
The Civil Rights Act.