It is an unfortunate fact that the word "liberal" has multiple meanings, ranging anywhere from an Enlightenment term of high praise to a modern-day epithet associated with Marxism. This is perhaps not surprising, given the English usage of, for example, a "liberal amount" of ketchup, means that you really pile it on. So, naturally, liberals (or, perhaps, Liberals) want to spend lots of money that they've taken from rich people. Conservatives, on the other hand, are supposed to be free-market, no hand outs, low taxes, no regulation.
I have no particular issue with this, except it's palpably true that the association of Republicans with conservatism, and Democrats with liberalism, is utter bunk. Conservatism means, well, conserving the status quo. We, as a society, have improved to allow gay rights, abortion rights, set up a robust economic system including institutions that prevent bank collapse and impropriety. It is the conservatives that would like to maintain this. Which party would you say that is?
The Democrats are, as near as I can tell, the true conservatives. They believe in retaining the rights we have given to people, and they are historically much better at managing an economy that is relatively unfettered to do its thing. 60 years of economic data shows that under Democrats the economy grows at all levels, the society is less stratified, and the federal deficit is low (in the most recent case, we had a surplus).
Republicans, on the other hand, are split among two groups. One is a group that seeks to consolidate massive amounts of power, which grows the government at astoundingly irresponsible rates and simultaneously does everything they can do to make sure tax revenue does not grow under their leadership. For some reason, the public is wont to have low taxes, even as the cumulative debt grows to unimaginable proportions.
However, the majority of Republicans are reactionaries. They don't seek to conserve what we have, they seek to move backward. Many of them would rescind the rights of gays to marry (many also wish to strip their other rights out, as well), rescind the right to abort a pregnancy for any reason, to eliminate the well-worn institutions that actually would likely have averted the current financial disaster had they been left alone. This is not conservatism; this is not a steady-as-she-goes mentality, maintaining a level playing field for people to operate within. It is an odious push to walk backward, backward into the same mistakes that we've made in our history, backward to a time of intolerance, robber barons, and trusts. Backwards into a time before church and state were separated.
We have it good right now, but we had it better before we began this nearly 8-year march in reverse. With luck, the public will have the good sense to vote with the party which is what embodies real conservatism.