"An unmentionable irony,'' writes Diggins, is that big-government conservatism is an inevitable result of Reaganism. ''Under Reagan, Americans could live off government and hate it at the same time. Americans blamed government for their dependence upon it.'' Unless people have a bad conscience about demanding big government -- a dispenser of unending entitlements -- they will get ever larger government. But how can people have a bad conscience after being told (in Reagan's first inaugural) that they are all heroes? And after being assured that all their desires, including desires for government-supplied entitlements, are good?"
Reading that, helps to explain this:
"We asked him three times to explain why President Bush and the Republican Congress have increased discretionary non-defense spending at such an alarming rate, and why the party has embraced the expansion of the federal government’s roles in education, agriculture and Great Society-era entitlement programs. “Those questions have been decided,” was his response. The public wants an expanded federal role in those areas, and the Republican Party at the highest levels has decided to give the public what it wants.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/975049/posts