My conservatism is entirely fiscal and political.
And I think you'd be surprised at how similar our end goals are -- we just radically disagree over how to achieve them.
It makes total sense to me why people would think a larger, more involved government is a good thing:
1) Poor people get stuff. And everybody likes stuff.
IV) Middle class people get to watch them go after the rich guys
c) Rich people can buy-off a handful of politicians instead of being forced to compete on quality, service and price.
It's no surprise things are moving in the direction they are. It just puts a "rich" in a tough situation where even if they philosophically object to doing business that way, they don't really have a choice. Right now, the cool thing to talk about is your "Government Play" -- just like it was cool to talk about your "E-commerce Strategy" back in the late 1990's and your "Globalization Strategy" back in the late 1980's.