Paine makes his attitude towards government quite clear in the very beginning of 'Common Sense':
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
However, Paine wouldn't have much truck with the likes of Beck, Caine and the 'Tea Party'. Indeed, my opinion is that Paine's philosophy verges on anarchism, far and away from any current form of the Republican Party.
More importantly, having just finished reading Paine's 'The Age of Reason' -- what passes for the 'conservative' political faction in the U.S. today would probably try and have Paine locked-up in Gitmo for his atheistic and stridently anti-Bible arguments.
Paine was a radical and though he believed in private property rights ... but he was always poor, never 'successful' in a way that the 'Romney class' would have ever acknowledged as meaningful.
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