Poll finds Americans want bigger government – and most Republicans do as well

Do you know what the difference is between a Republican and a Democrat? One is in power and the other one isn’t. That is the only difference.

A new poll suggests that Republican voters talk tough about limited government and personal responsibility when they’re not in power, but when their guy is leading the country then they want all of their goodies.

Since February 2013, more Americans have preferred a bigger government with more services. And this is found across party lines.

Pew Research Center has discovered that more than half (57 percent) of Americans want the government to do more. This is the highest it has been in 20 years. Social Security, environmental protection, Medicare and defense, voters of all stripes want the state to take charge and spend more.

Fifty-percent of Republican voters agree with this sentiment. Sixty-one percent of Democratic voters concur with this idea.

Here is a Pew chart:

When Republican voters were complaining during the Obama administration about big government, they weren’t necessarily upset about the size of the swamp. They were more upset that the John McCains, the Lindsey Grahams, the Jeb Bushes and the Marco Rubios of Washington weren’t heading the monolithic body.

Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire had great commentary on this trend:

Either way, smaller government comes out the loser.

And this isn’t Trump’s fault – it’s the fault of Republicans who supported his program. Trump, despite his promises to cut regulations and fight waste, fraud, and abuse, campaigned as a big government anti-immigration protectionist. He vowed to increase spending in every area but foreign aid and environmental protection. His most ardent followers knew that he was promising them the help of big government, and they embraced it. Trump spent the campaign guaranteeing that he wouldn’t touch the great drivers of America’s debt, entitlement programs – in fact, he said he wanted to expand them.

This is the difference between George W. Bush and Trump. Bush, too, blew out spending. But much of his base opposed him for doing so. Not so with Trump: he has made the case that he needs to spend in order to win the votes of those in swing states, and many Republicans have signed on. They’re doing so either out of hypocrisy or out of the pure political calculation that the day of small government is done, so we might as well have a Republican running a massive government. In either case, that’s a bleak denouement for a movement built on the back of Ronald Reagan’s foundational belief that government is the problem.

For shame.