Republicans have, to one degree or another over the last 36 years, attempted to corral the government by trying to abolish departments and cut funding for programs. To a large extent, they have been unsuccessful in abolishing departments but Congress’ control of the purse strings has allowed them, when in the majority and even sometimes when in the minority, to reduce the income the government receives through tax cuts. This is the quintessential Republican effort to “starve the beast” so that “smaller government” is the result. What is really intended and what has recently become clear to those who take the long view of politics and society, is that these efforts were meant to cause the government not to work, to not function in the best interests of the country, to be dysfunctional, to be “out of touch” with the American people. Thus, Republicans’ efforts to obstruct the current President from Day 1 (Mitch McConnell and others meeting on the night of the 2009 inauguration and pledging to make sure Obama was a “failed” president by obstructing everything he proposed) were geared to create a failure which they could then point to as reason for concluding that the Democrats and Obama in particular were wrong for the country and that, consequently, people should vote for Republicans. In essence, Republicans created the failure of government in order to point to it and say, “See, the government is a failure!”
Source: The Republican Party as currently constituted is an existential threat to American democracy
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