“Conservatives didn’t exist during the New Deal. “
Not true. Understandable since liberal history books whitewash it, but they were fighting the rising tide of socialism:
http://www.redstate.com/stories/miscellanea/earning_the_true_conservative_vote
In 1937, “US Senator Josiah Bailey of North Carolina was concerned that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal programs were leading America and North Carolina down the road to collectivism. Although he did not oppose every attempt at government intervention, Senator Bailey believed that limitations should be placed on government growth.” He is credited with being part of a group that drafted the Conservative Manifesto which offered 10 “practical solutions” for the problems of the times:
1. Immediate revision of taxes on capital gains and undistributed profits in order to free investment funds.
2. Reduced expenditures to achieve a balanced budget, and thus, to still fears deterring business expansion.
3. An end to coercion and violence in relations between capital and labor.
4. Opposition to “unnecessary” government competition with private enterprise.
5. Recognition that private investment and enterprise require a reasonable profit.
6. Safeguarding the collateral upon which credit rests.
7. Reduction of taxes, or if this proved impossible at the moment, firm assurance of no further increases.
8. Maintenance of state rights, home rule, and local self-government, except where proved definitely inadequate.
9. Economical and non-political relief to unemployed with maximum local responsibility.
10. Reliance upon the American form of government and the American system of enterprise.
There may have been individuals who espoused all the elements that came together in Buckley and then Goldwater, but if so, they were so few that they were mere oddities and crackpots in a sea of liberals on the Dem side and country clubbers on the GOP side.