• Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      That isn’t really true, now or ever. It is old, crusty propaganda. It is their excuse for their actions of opposing any and all (useful and fair) government spending, but they really just want to funnel all that same amount of government money, if not more, into the pockets of the people who bribe them. They also obviously don’t believe this as far as personal liberties, they want more power with which to control all finances to their own ends.

      None of that is “small” it is better described as “ineffective” or how I see it, “not designed for your benefit”

    • darq@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The definitely do not. They want the government to be involved in private medical decisions about one’s own body. Conservatives love invasive and overbearing governments.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They want to show the government is “failing” so they can gut it and replace it with what they want. Profit and control. They know not enough people will pay attention to notice it’s republicans actively causing the failures.

    • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That’s why they want politicians to tell us what medical procedures we can get, why they want women to not be able to leave their states, why they want governments to pick and choose what books people can read and even what nicknames you can be called! Because small Government!

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      They literally don’t. The last time Republicans cut anything (spending, agency scope, etc) was… back in Reagan’s time? They say they want smaller government, but every time Republicans have control, they grow government, they just grow it differently than Democrats.

      For example:

      • Bush Sr. - didn’t do much other than passing bipartisan bills
      • Bush Jr - Patriot Act, TSA, military spending
      • Trump - tax cuts and increased spending (at the tail end of an economic boom), stupid tariffs

      And Reagan wasn’t the epitome of small government either, he just talked about it a lot. According to Mother Jones (strong leftist bias), Reagan grew the national debt substantially and increased the number of government employees (there were far fewer in 2012 than the end of Reagan’s presidency).

      I used to consider myself Republican back when I believed they were actually in favor of small government, but I have seen no evidence that Republicans actually are. So I switched my registration to Libertarian and now vote for both parties, depending on how I think the candidate views government.