There's a charitable explanation for the explosion of federal spending under Bush: many expenditures rise automatically in a recession, and increased funding for the military and domestic security was inevitable after September 11th. But one has to wonder whether the Republicans' free-spending ways also reflect the party's changing voting base. The GOP is no longer the party of Wall Street and the Eastern establishment, the traditional constituency for fiscal responsibility. Bush depends on the South, the Rust Belt and the Farm Belt. Is it any wonder that the administration has increased military spending, which benefits the South more than any other region, has attempted indirect taxation through protection of the steel industry, and indulged agro-industry with farm subsidies? The Republicans have become a party of big government -- not by accident, or by recession, or by Osama, but because the Bush electoral coalition clusters round the federal trough.
Conservatives simmer as spending mushrooms under Bush [USA Today]