The party system is one thing, the language used is another. There's no particular confusion while you're using party labels .- I mean, nobody thinks that because someone is sounding of against Democrats they are necessarily against democracy, and attacking the Republicans doesn't automatically imply they want to bring back a hereditary monarchy.

But denouncing small l liberals and liberalism is something different. It's taking a word that any decent person, right across the political spectrum, should see as positive and turning it into an attack word. As I pointed out, anyone who is actually opposed to liberals is by definition illiberal. To adopt a term sometimes used in British politics as something t avoid, it is defining yourself as belonging to the "nasty party".