Whew, that was a long time ago...:-)
Forty years earlier, the liberal Northeast and the Left Coast voted for William McKinley and the Bible Belt voted for a man who promised to nationalize the railroads, limit the amount of property an individual could own, and institute an income tax.
That was an even longer time ago.
There has always been a strong small government wing in the Republican Party, mostly Westerners as opposed to the progressives in the East. It seems to me that the Parties, with exceptions, have done a 180 since that scum TDR.