Hypothesis 2: Though the Liberal/Conservative self-placement 7-point scale is highly predictive of responses to general questions about the role of government, it is not predictive of specific issues related to it. (Note: when controlling for party ID, independents were approximately evenly distributed on general questions about the role of government.)
Assuming that conservatism best corresponds to limited government and liberalism to expanded government, there was a general tendency for each group to answer accordingly to “ONE, the less government, the better; OR TWO, there are more things that government should be doing?” Moderates chose option two against one 63.1% versus 36.9% of the time. Controlling for party identification in this case yields little new information: Democrats agreed with more government with a slightly greater tendency than Republicans with less government. Likewise, on the spending-services 7-point scale, “1” being the government providing many fewer services and “7” being many more services, the groups behaved as expected once more. Very few non-moderate respondents strayed from “their side” of the spending-services spectrum by passing the middle response, “4.” The liberal/conservative scale is once more shown to be a good general tool for predicting stated attitudes about the general role of government. Moreover, party identification (Republican and Democrat only) serves as a simpler, more general guideline.
Are these tendencies translated into attitudes on specific issues? Examining five Federal Budget items- Science and Technology, Aid to the Poor, Public Education, Social Security, and Welfare Programs- we find that our predictions based on the liberal/conservative scale are not as strong as we initially thought.
For Science and Technology, (“Should federal spending on SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY be INCREASED, DECREASED, or kept ABOUT THE SAME?”), 54% answered that it should be increased, 8.5% decreased, and 37.4% kept the same for the entire sample. Even Republicans (and in turn conservatives), the assumed small-government advocates, responded 45.9% “increase,” 46.5% “keep the same,” and a paltry 7.5% “decrease.”
Aid to the poor (Should federal spending on AID TO POOR PEOPLE be INCREASED, DECREASED, or kept ABOUT THE SAME?), another distinct function of size of government, yielded 52.5%, 8.8%, and 38.7% from the entire sample, respectively, with 35% of Republicans responding to increase it and only 13.2% to decrease it.
Public Education (Should federal spending on PUBLIC SCHOOLS be INCREASED, DECREASED, or kept ABOUT THE SAME?), a large federal spending item, was even more significant evidence for contradictory government preferences, with 74.2% calling for an increase, 5.5% for a decrease, and 20.2% to keep it the same. Once more, Republicans took a relatively big-government approach: 55.5%, 11.1%, and 33.2%, respectively.
Social Security (Should federal spending on SOCIAL SECURITY be INCREASED, DECREASED, or kept ABOUT THE SAME?), a “hot-button” issue in the 2004 campaign, also landed similar numbers: 60.2%, 4.1%, and 35.4%.
One possible counterexample to the past four is the Welfare issue. The distribution was surprisingly different: only 22.4% responded “increase,” 33.5% “decrease,” and 44.1% “keep about the same.” However, though Republicans appeared to assess this question more in line with their general view of government (9.7%, 42.0%, and 48.2%), both Democrats (29%, 26.2%, 44.8%) and Independents (28.4%, 31.8%, 39.8%) also posted similarly significant numbers unfavorable to welfare, relative to our expectations. Because the pro-government groups also had a less favorable response, we can not attribute this behavior to Republican constraint to their answers on limited government, but instead must find another exogenous reason (e.g. stigma attached to idea “welfare,” such as “free riders” or abuse of food stamps.)
Conclusion
Assessing the predictive value of liberal/conservative placement or any other ideological guideline is not as important for expectations of expanded government on a specific issue basis, due to the possibility that one might reject a program because of its practical constraints. On the other hand, practicality should not affect a conservative’s decision on a program that, based on his ideology, should not have been there in the first place. Going by a strict definition of conservatism as a principle of limited government (i.e. no social welfare programs, regulation, redistribution of wealth, etc.) it is clear that almost no conservatives in the sample endorsed either a decrease or complete removal of all of the Federal Budget items above.
Except for the Welfare anomaly, in all four specific issues, less than 10 percent of the entire sample desired a decrease in spending, over 50% an increase in spending, and the remainder to be kept the same (where “keeping the same” entails the same current federal budget, which is large for a “small government”). Despite these results, 30% of the sample responded “3” or less on the spending/services scale and 48.9% chose “the less government the better” over “there are more things the government should be doing.” Though lack of constraint to strict conservatism as an ideology is expected, the few who opted to decrease for each program which constitutes a large, non-military, “non-essential” part of the Federal Budget, can not account for all of those who responded positively to a limited role of government, indicating a lack of constraint within their own choices. Some of this discrepancy could possibly be explained by confusion about the definitions of “liberal” and “conservative,” in using them as they relate to lifestyle or social values, or even about the meaning of “limited government.” Also, the Republican Party’s leadership may explain the difference between rhetoric and practice, as emphasis is commonly placed upon “hard work,” “entrepreneurship,” “the rugged individual,” and sometimes “government noninterference,” yet regulatory bills, particular social programs, and prohibitive laws based on “social utility” are passed by Republican Congresses. The result is that it is misleading to say the U.S. has a “conservative” government, at least not in the classical sense. Its two major parties, as has been seen, are far from diametric opposites: the Democrats supported every program withholding the exceptional “welfare,” and the Republicans did the same- just to a lesser degree. This shouldn’t be surprising. As author James Stimson describes it, America is a nation of “conflicted conservatives”: symbolically conservative but operationally liberal.