Republicans' anti-government chickens have finally come home to roost
Ronald Reagan, the most beloved president of the modern Republican Party (before Donald J. Trump, anyway) had a very famous saying:
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help. "
It was a clever comment that the leaders of the conservative movement never took seriously, of course. The Republicans were always big boosters of first responders, cops and the military who are generally the ones who literally say "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But the anti-government sentiment worked well for the wealthy benefactors who paid these politicians handsomely to keep their taxes low and regulations scarce.
They also used that message to persuade voters that the government was trying to oppress them with everything from creeping communism to affirmative action and women's rights. In other words, everything these people already hated was blamed on Big Government by the very people who ran it. The subtext of much of this was race, of course, as the cynical conservatives managed to convince people that the government was doling out handouts to the "undeserving" (and I think you know who they were talking about) in the form of welfare, while the hard-working Real Americans were paying the freight and getting the shaft.
Over time they were able to demagogue the issue so thoroughly that average Republicans routinely voted against their own interests out of a reflexive hostility to anything the government tried to do (other than wage war, which they loved.) When the financial crisis hit in 2007 and the government was required to intervene or risk the whole economic system going into free fall, it was clear just how successful they had been.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/republicans-anti-government-chickens-have-finally-come-home-to-roost/ar-AAMtL2y
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