Is atheism an essentially conservative or fundamentally liberal stance?
Dividing up into opposing groups based on political or religious belief (opinion) is an exercise based on blindness. To transcend such shallow behavior patterns should be the goal.
Personally, I think conservatism and religiosity seem to go hand in hand. Being highly religious generally makes someone more closed minded, prejudiced, and insular which goes hand-in-hand with conservative ideology.
Unless you were raised atheist, which seems to be pretty rare, at least in the U.S., you have to at least somewhat open-minded and open to new ideas.
I'm sure there are some conservative atheists and I think I may have ran across a few here on Agnostic.com. And I've met some people who are religious but at least somewhat liberal in some of their social and political views.
But, those are just my opinions and personal experiences.