I'm not sure I see eye to eye with the poster's interpretation of history. It was the Republican Party that Lincoln belonged to. It was the Republican Party that enacted Reconstruction.

jwkoenig: It would be virtually impossible to place slavery on the political continuum during the 18th and early 19th centuries...it was all but universally endorsed. However, there were a few who spoke out against it and refused to participate in it. They were often religious liberals who refused to accept the conservative interpretations of the Bible that took the Old Testament literally.

hherbert, I am aware of the history. I also don't completely agree that conservatives "fear" people with other backgrounds. In different situations I would argue that they maybe don't "like" some of those groups but it would be far from fear. As far as the Bill of Rights and Jefferson being liberal, they were but in some contexts but in the context of this specific question (civil rights), they were not. Many of our founding fathers (including Jefferson) and others that pushed for the bill of rights were not and owned many slaves, implemented the three fifths compromise, etc. This was just the time period and that is why I said that the beliefs were pretty universally held.

To jwkoenig: I'm glad you qualified your response with "pretty universally." In all times political beliefs can be identified as liberal and conservative. The more conservative a person is the more likely that person is to fear people who are different while liberals have always been more willing to accept "others"...even within the church. Democrats started moving to the left in 1948 when Truman integrated the armed forces and Strom Thurmond created the Dixicrats. Liberals, not conservatives pushed for the Bill of Rights and religious freedom...some founding fathers were liberal while others were conservatives. In his day and among his peers Thomas Jefferson was a liberal, not a conservative. Therefore, you are missing quite a lot.

The question is fundamentally flawed, since there were times in history when those beliefs, however wrong, were held pretty universally. Even in more modern times, it wasn't until LBJ that civil rights were pushed by the Democrats. Additionally, the poor are hardly a minority with about 50% of people on some some of government assistance, and women aren't a minority either. As far as religious minorities, I am pretty sure that it was conservatives that included freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights. Am I missing something?

My argument is that they cannot. When the Tea Party advocates complain that they have been unfairly tagged with being Lilly white and are identified with racial prejudice, they are attempting to deny the anti-civil rights history of conservatives. Conservative Republicans cannot shake the charge that they use charged words like "foreign" or "not American" because the have been preempted from using racial slurs against President Obama.