As much as there ever really were "small government republicans" there certainly aren't any today. "Owning the libs" is the only reason the current batch of conservatives gets out of bed in the morning.
We should call what it is. They working to make the lives of other US citizens as miserable as they can. Whoever does this is working against their own country. This is unpatriotic.
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Absolutely. To get a slice of that thinking. Here's Rush Limbaugh:
(backstory: Trump has been repeatedly peddling an absolutely baseless claim that his TV critic Joe Scarborough murdered his employee couple of decades back. Her husband is now pleading that Trump is causing irreparable damage to their family). Anyway, here's Limbaugh:
“The thing here is when you get to Trump and his conspiracy theories, he does it in a really clever way,” he proclaimed. “And this is where people don’t get the subtlety of Trump because they don’t think he has the ability to be subtle. Trump never says that he believes these conspiracy theories that he touts. He’s simply passing them on.”
Asked by his producer whether he thinks “Trump cares whether Scarborough murdered anybody or not,” Limbaugh replied that the president doesn’t care but is tweeting about it “because it’s out there.”
“So Trump is just throwing gasoline on a fire here, and he’s having fun watching the flames—and he’s having fun watching these holier-than-thou leftist journalists react like their moral sensibilities have been forever rocked and can never recover,” he concluded.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nratv-dan-bongino-my-life-is-...