The Republican party - always the party of the rich?

In a recent article (or pâper how he likes to call it) about Alex Jones and a tax especially tailored for the wealthy in the US (the capital gains tax), Miles Mathis (of Pi=4 fame) claims the Republican party was always the party of the rich.

He says:

"Historically, being conservative meant you were on the side of the rich, and only recently (past 40 years) has that flipped (...) If you are for old fashioned values of any sort, you are supposed to define yourself as conservative, even if you hate the rich (...) They don't understand how strange it is to have the American middle class and working class supporting the
Republican Party—always and still the party of the rich."

I beg to differ.

It is a known, historical fact that, at some point, Republicans and Democrats (though some weird sleight-of-hand I guess) switched their stances, but in the early days, before this switch, it was the Democrats who were the party of slavery, it was the Democrats who supported slavery... and obviously, this means they were the party of the rich as who else but the rich was keeping slaves?

So, Mathis appears to want to ignore this fact, but you can hardly define the Republicans as the "party of the rich" at the times of slavery.

Any thoughts?


[link to mileswmathis.com]