Do US Republicans really want a smaller government or just a different one?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is more of a question for me since I don’t know much about US politics (I’m not American) but it’s clearly not going to have a definitive answer.

Reading some other threads I’ve begun to wonder this. I often hear Republicans say they want less government. It seems a pretty standard answer in the thread asking non-religious Republicans why they favour that party. But do Republican candidates really stand for a smaller government, or just one that pokes its nose into other places? From what I understand there’s a lot of support in the Republican party for banning abortions, tighter drug draws, tighter laws on “morality”, banning of bad influences etc.

So can it truly be said they want a smaller government? Opinions?

2

You’ve answered your own question.

3

It’s a biggish tent. The GOP since Gingrich took over in 1994 seem to mostly object to the welfare state and anything social-democratic, because Gingrich objects to the welfare state and anything social-democratic, and those he brought in were those who agreed with that, I guess. As for the size of the rest of the government, there is a range of opinions.

4

I believe they envision a smaller government but would end up with a larger one. Just imagine how many millions of government worker would be needed to run their newly created Department On How To Legislate Morality.

5

There are two main flavors of Republicans. There are the ones who think that the marketplace knows what’s best for society (fiscal conservatives), and that government should not interfere with the Holy Marketplace, and then there’s the ones who believe that God (the god of the Jews and Christians, that is) knows what’s best for society, and Thou Shalt Not Defy God (social conservatives). There’s some overlap, but the Republican party is really two parties who can agree on some issues.

Ronald Reagan actively courted the social conservatives, much to the chagrin of most fiscal conservatives. Social conservatives will claim to be for smaller government…unless and until they can push through legislation that will further their own causes. A fiscal conservative would not want any restrictions on abortion, for instance, but would think that the marketplace would sort out whether or not women will have access to abortions. A social conservative, though, will make all sorts of rules and laws for abortions, if it’s impossible to outlaw abortions outright.

6

Republicans are opposed to certain types of public spending. Santorum, for example, opposes aid to higher education because "Leftists [use universities to brainwash students for the purpose of] holding and maintaining power [so] it’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college.” (source: nationalreview.com). Republicans oppose government food inspection: in a perfect market, poor or ignorant people should be allowed the option of cheaper uninspected food, while entrepreneurs fulfill the needs of those who prefer to avoid unsafe food.

However it is necessary to “starve the beast”, to ensure that the public treasury is nearly bankrupt so that leftists have difficulty restoring schooling, inspections, etc. when they regain power. Thus spending huge sums of money on “non-leftist” government programs is important to the Republican agenda.

For example, the Iraq War was pursued not despite that it was a huge waste of money but, to a large extent, because it was a huge waste of money.

7

Well that one’s new to me.

Do any genu-wine Republicans have a take on the question?

8

This will be moved to great debates or the pit I’m sure so I don’t mind being frank but Republican’s talk of small government was always lip service. Septimus pretty much nailed it. They don’t want smaller; they want what they want.

In VA, Republicans made it mandatory for a doctor to perform a non medically necessary very invasive sonogram on woman to punish them for having an Abortion. That’s the state telling a doctor what they must do.

In Michigan, Republicans empowered and expanded a law that allows the Governor to disband a lawfully elected government and install a hand picked overseer who has unlimited control of the town. Right now over half the black residents of Michigan have no direct representation because their towns are run by people picked by the governor.

In AZ, a law was proposed (and may have been passed, I don’t remember) that makes it illegal for teachers to violate FCC decency regulations even outside of school.

On a Federal level there is Terri Schiavo, where Small Government Republicans cut short a recess to go into session to make end of life decisions for a private citizen.

While I am sure there is an enclave of sincere Libertarians inside the GOP (the Ron Paulers), their Party only preaches that noise; it doesn’t practice it.

ETA To expand something on Septimus touched on, yes, the Republican plan since the 70s has been to run up debt while they hold power so they can scream about deficits when Democrats hold office. It was working perfectly yet again until Occupy Wall Street changed the conversation.

9

The alliance between the social and fiscal conservatives was catalyzed by various factors including but not limited to the mid-20th century transformations in which Southern social conservative populists felt deserted by the Democrats embracing the Civil Rights banner; the onetime threat of (REAL) socialist/communist expansion that would be a threat to both their ways of life; and so on. By now their alliance has gone on so long it feels like “it’s just the way it is” but as the recent primary reveals, there ARE tensions between the fiscal cons and social cons as to which agenda should have priority. Specially now that the neocons’ unifying focus on an external threat has sort of fallen off the screen.

What has been able to bind them together to a great extent is that since, in their view, for some of the population the behavior contrary to “values” is enabled either through government aid or through mandates for it to be accommodated, they can still do some limiting of those choices (sociocon agenda) by merely defunding or deprotecting them (fiscalcon agenda), rather than direct intervention and policing.

To the title question, I think the bulk of US Republicans probably want a different government and they’d rather it end up being a smaller one but it’s not a deal-breaker. IMO in their hearts they’d rather have a restoration of social opprobrium as the force suppressing nonapproved conduct and expression; after all you did NOT have a huge national department of morals enforcement in the past when they believe that the “traditional values” were universally followed and God was shedding his grace on us. Many modern Social Conservatives however have a look at their TVs and realize that, wait a minute, the invisible hand of the free marketplace seems to be telling us that loose morals and unconventional lifestyles IS where the profit’s at… (…what, like they noticed NOW?)

10

I’d say there are at least three strong factions in the Republican Party.

One is the social conservatives. They want a strong government that enforces their values - banning abortions and gay marriage and drugs and pornography and premarital sex and people speaking Spanish and whatever else they feel shouldn’t be part of America.

Two is the pro-business crowd. These guys don’t want any government regulation but they want a big government as a customer and as a fall-back to give them money in financial hard times.

Third is the libertarians. They’re the only faction that actually wants a smaller overall government.

11

Libertarians will sometimes vote for Republicans, or run as Republicans, but around here, we get people running as Libertarians or Independents, so I tend to think of Libertarians as not a part of the GOP.

12

As discussed in this thread, the divisions in the Republican party date back to the Goldwater era, when oppostion to communism caused differing factions (religious fundamentalists, laizzes faire capitalists, cultural nativists, along with others) to believe that were ideologically united.

The fall of communism revealed that there were substantive differences between these factions (as noted above, between, say, unfettered capitalism and religiously derived morality).

But since everyone thought there was some underlying principal uniting them all, they all claim that their particular faction is the “true conservative” one.

The religious guy doesn’t want the billionaire developer to build a casino in his small town in the Bible Belt. But instead of getting together and coming to some sort of compromise, they yell at each other and try to win arguments based on some non-existent principal.

Because this debate has never begun, the focus is on contorting arguments so that ‘liberalism’ is blamed for the disagreements.

I remember in 2006 when Dubya announced his moderate stance on immigration. I was deployed to Iraq with some staunch Bush supporters who were in strong disagreement with Bush’s new immigration stance. But instead of criticizing him, they blamed ‘liberal pressure’. Bush couldn’t be to blame, because he was one of them. (At least until things really went to hell in late 2008, when I first started hearing lots of conservatives denouncing Bush as having betrayed his principles.)

To people who think like this, conservatism can never be at fault, for when it is, it ceases to be conservatism.

Not all conservatives think this way, but for the time being, the ones that do are controlling the Republican party.

13

It seems to me that neither fiscal nor social conservatives are shy about military spending.

14

Re: Starve the Beast.

15

No small number of them seem to want government to be juuuuuuuuust small enough to fit uncomfortably into my vagina. Those ones can fuck right off.

16

LOL! Good one, DianaG!

17

I don’t think anyone’s disputing that some Republicans have proposed to “starve the beast”. The question was whether there was a plan to intentionally overspend on some programs so that there wouldn’t be enough money left for other programs. All the “beast starvers” I’ve heard of propose to do it by cutting taxes not by reallocating money.

18

That’s because the fiscal conservatives at the top are very good at whipping the social conservatives at the bottom into a state of permanent patriotic frenzy.

19

The average Republican’s thinking doesn’t go much beyond “Lower my taxes and keep your atheist hands away from my guns.” I was referring to the policymakers who actually set the Republican legislative agenda.

I’d need to be in a BBQ Pit thread before I could discuss GOP budgeting ideas in detail, but one simple example should make clear that reducing the deficit is not the goal of their initiatives which claim to seek that goal. Google “IRS budget cuts” but be prepared, depending on your mood, to laugh or cry. For example read that such cuts not only help make taxpayers hate government (a key aim of much GOP policy) but, since the IRS is … surprise! … a profit center, each $1 cut in the IRS budget doesn’t save the Treasury $1, but rather costs it $9.

20

We republicans want both. We want a government that does less and we want what is left over after to do a few other things than the current one.