Be careful reading too deep into what people self-describe as. Many claim themselves “conservative” or “liberal” yet may have wildly different ideas as to what these labels mean… some of this is due to the fact that conservative/liberal are such semantically mutilated and confused terms in the context of American politics.
If you go back through history not too far, and look at the philosophies underpinning the founding of the United States, it began as a liberal country—when at the time liberal meant an ethos of individual liberty, self-determination, and minimal government. Or what is now termed Libertarian.
The Progressives/Socialists misappropriated “liberal” for themselves at some point; and defenders of classical liberalism proper or libertarianism, became the “conservatives”, a word which usually implied “reactionary and traditionalist”… and it gets even more convoluted from there…
Oh, and as another example of why it’s good idea to be skeptical of what people self-describe as—I read a Gallup poll yesterday which says that 53% of Americans self-describe as pro-life, yet only 20% of Americans say they want abortion banned. And many here would say then that the only that 20% are the real pro-lifers.
Here's something else to consider:
One of the flaws of the GOP's campaign against Obama was that it was based on assertions that were -- surprisingly -- verifiably false. For example, the GOP has been painting Obama as a president who is hell-bent on raising taxes -- and that would seem like something that's beyond question. And yet here we are in late 2012 ... more than a decade after most of the "Bush tax cuts" were implemented ... and more than seven years after Barack Obama begain railing against those tax cuts as a U.S. Senator from Illinois ... and those Bush tax rates are still in place.