Words mean what you want them to mean. Today’s small government conservative is a classical liberal. And also, as of Trump, a Democrat 😉

The problem for small government conservatives is that they’ve never really had a party to call home. Reagan actively courted libertarians and Republicans since then have worked small government sound bites into all their speeches, but they never actually were much of a small government party when they were in power – only promoting small government policies that extended much beyond tax cuts as a means of opposing Democrats when they were out of power.