Conservative Democrat
After 1980, the Republicans became a mostly right-wing conservative party, with conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott, and Tom DeLay, while the Democrats, while keeping their core liberal bases intact with such Senators as Ted Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Paul Sarbanes, grew a substantial moderate/centrist wing, the New Democrats, in the 1990s in place of their old conservative wing, with leaders such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Evan Bayh. In the 2010 midterm elections, many conservative Democrats lost their seats to the Republicans.
National conservatism
National conservative parties in different countries do not necessarily share a common position on economic policy: their views may range from support of a planned economy to a centrist mixed economy to a "laissez-faire" approach. In the first, more common, case, national conservatives can be distinguished from liberal conservatives, for whom free market economic policies, deregulation and tight spending are the main priorities. Some commentators have indeed identified a growing gap between national and economic liberal conservatism: "most parties of the Right [today] are run by economically liberal conservatives who, in varying degrees, have marginalized social, cultural, and national conservatives."