system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
Are you saying there wasn't a party switch at all? It's pretty clear that the Republican party of today is not the big government, pro-business progressives of the Republican Party in the 19th century, and the Democratic Party of today is not the pro-farmer, pro-state's rights and anti-Reconstruction party of the 19th century. Not saying that the two parties literally just swapped ideologies, but they did significantly shift from their original beliefs.
gpt
Democrats have shifted a lot for several reasons but republicans have changed much less. Imo the biggest hurdle comes from the idea that republicans were progressive. To a degree they obviously were in that they drove massive reform. But unlike a progressive, their goal wasn’t “progress”. It wasn’t specific and tangible ends. Things that in hindsight are called progressive. These same beliefs are still very prevalent in the republican party.

As for being big government, authoritarian would be a more accurate term. Specifically that there were things that needed to be fixed and it was the governments job to fix them but even generally that there’s a right and a wrong and the government should enforce people to follow it. This idea is still very prevalent in the republican party. Though obviously it has also inherited a majority of the capitalistic libertarians who are otherwise homeless, which also gives it a tilt toward no government at all. 

But if you examine the core ideologies instilled by lincoln or even teddy fifty years later, you can find that they are very much in the GOP to this day. Democrats have changed dramatically but it has been a party of populism for a long long time, so it’s not very surprising. It’s only through a twisting a facts that anyone could believe there was ever a switch though. It’s just nonsense.