At the end of the day, few "republicans" live up to the small, less costly government narrative.
Both Reagan and Trump have failed to reduce the size, scope and cost of government; in part because they increased military spending, and cut taxes.
The military spending hikes didn't help, but the lack of
real spending cuts elsewhere around the government---as opposed to the old trick (and they still play it now) of calling for lesser spending increases and calling
that spending "cuts"---is probably the bigger culprit. Nobody in their right mind would oppose tax cuts, of course (certainly not I), while those in their left minds would, but without concurrent real spending cuts (and with other tomfoolery such as President Tweety's trade wars) you end up saying, sadly and soon enough, they were nice tax cuts while they lasted.
There are only a few hundred key political appointees, yet tens of thousands of highly partisan career bureaucrats.
Should a real conservative ever be elected (not likely), he will need to learn this lesson again.
Once upon a time, the libertarian
bellettrist Frank Chodorov said, "How to get rid of the Communists in government? Easy. Just abolish the jobs."
And since a wisecrack George F. Will made in 1978 remains true enough today (
Today's conservative has reached into his heart of hearts, prayed hard, and decided it was high time that the government cut his neighbour's
benefits), I, like you, am afraid that abolishing the jobs is anything but easy for even the most committed rightward politicians in Congress or the White House.
I still remember the real reason Newt Gingrich began blowing his cred in the late 1990s: nothing to do with impeaching Droopy Drawers Clinton and
everything to do with calling for budgets and for other bills
that were even more bloated than anything Droopy Drawers himself was asking for by then. In 1998, in fact, Newtie and the Blowfish's strong-arming attempt to bring the rest of the Republican't house into line on one of those bloated budgets provoked a group of House Republican'ts to oppose it loudly, go home and campaign loudly on that opposition and why they voted against it . . . and
those were the only GOP incumbents who didn't lose their seats that November.
And I remain haunted by a book I read in 2007 that I still think should have been required reading for anyone going into the coming primary season, never mind general election:
