..Is ridiculous and is linked to liberals arrogance regarding Civil Rights. The Republican Party has always had a conservative wing and a liberal wing, they even do today. Even though Benjamin Harrison, Teddy Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft were from a more liberal bend (and to call them ‘liberal’ is pushing it.) Abe Lincoln was certainly not a liberal.

The reason they paint early Republicans as liberal and Democrats of the same era as conservatives is because Republicans supported the end of slavery and Democrats at the time were state’s rights supporters. While it’s true Dems of the era supported States Rights, as Barry Goldwater points out in “Conscience of a Conservative,” if you do not recognize individual civil rights for all people as the foundation of society, then you are not practicing true conservatism. True conservatives recognize civil rights first, then states rights, then national sovereignty.

Those Dems may have had some similar ideas and Republicans back then had similar ideas to us as well, but neither were conservatives. Why are we allowing modern Democrats to paint Abe Lincoln as a liberal? He himself was not a conservative, but he certainly was not a liberal.