Is the GOP/TP Really Against "Big Government?" Fuhgeddaboudit

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-the-GOP-TP-Really-Again-by-Steven-Jonas-Abortion_Class_Congress_Conservatism-140916-759.html

Is the GOP/TP Really Against "Big Government?" Fuhgeddaboudit
By Steven Jonas
OpEdNews Op Eds 9/16/2014 at 13:22:13

"Small Government Conservatism" has been THE GOP mantra ever since Reagan gave out with his famous pronouncement on "the government isn't the solution to your problems, it IS the problem," or words to that effect. This mantra today resonates from the so-called "sensible" Republicans in the Joe Scarborough (of "Morning Joe, in case you didn't know) mold to the most far-out of the Tea Partiers like Rep. Steve (8-year-old-undocumented-immigrants-have-calves-the-size-of-footballs-from-toting-drugs-across-the-desert (or words to that effect); my-you-speak-English-well (to a couple of Dreamers who came to the US as infants)) King of Iowa.

Before going on to the discussion of the substance of this column, let me say that I think that it must be understood that the difference between today's "mainstream" Republican Party, led by such eminences as John (gay-marriage-is-a-sin-because-the-Bible-tells-me-so) Boehner and Mitch (I-will-filibuster-any-bill-I-don't-like, said-in-December, 2008) McConnell and the "Tea Party" is solely a matter of style and rhetoric, not substance. They have the same agenda, to first and foremost serve the interests of their paymasters. That is, of course, a group of named and nameless leaders of the dominant wing of the US ruling class, for which the Koch Brothers make an oh-so-convenient twin figurehead. Those true interests are reflected precisely in just what the GOP/TP actually means when it talks about "Small Government Conservatism." The Tea Party is simply a very useful GOP Front/diversion, designed (and it was indeed designed, by such figures as former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey (1995-2003)) to make the GOP's very-central-to-its-true-meaning far-Rightedness, seem just perhaps not-so far-Right.



Many liberals and even some progressives get into direct and/or indirect battles with such folk over the question of what indeed is the role of government, Federal, state and local, in a large country like ours, with the Constitution that we have. But to me, that discussion does our side no good. For in fact the GOP/TP is hardly for "Small Government Conservatism" across the board. They use the mantra to attack programs that they don't like. But in many sectors of our society, they are for precisely the opposite. And that is what the argument should focus on: the substance of what they are for and what they are against, not the formalistic "big government/small government."

So let's see what they mean when they talk about "shrinking the government." In no particular order, and for example, of course they would like to get rid of Social Security and replace it with some sort of private system through which the financial sector could make additional profits. Funnily enough, they hate the Affordable Care Act, just because it's got Obama's name on it (courtesy, of course) of their own propagandists, even though the principal function of the ACA is to help the private health insurance industry stay afloat.