I’m sure Conservatives were bashing Ronald Reagan in the 1950’s when he was a New Deal Democrat and a Union President.
Well, no.
Reagan was already espousing Conservative ideals by the mid-1950s. He supported Eisenhower's candidacy in 1956. And as for the New Deal, the great majority of the country supported it (rightly or wrongly) in the 1930s, so that's hardly a viable yardstick for measuring political ideology.