> Can someone explain this ideological whiplash?

Easily. It's called fascism, one of the cornerstones being the marriage of industry and state. It has long been the marching direction of the US power structures, whether the individual participants cop to it or not. It has been an unwritten rule for decades and now it's just becoming more blatant. Republicans are not experiencing whiplash as much as they are becoming self-aware of their actual desires. There is a minority of the republican party that actually values small government (my respect goes out to them), but most of the party's actions to this end have been an obscene minority compared to their constant desire to either regulate morality via government overreach or enshrine their big business butt buddies into monopoly status.

While I feel the democrats are guilty of many of the same things, they are still a faction of what I would call the "capitalist-imperialist party." The GOP has been splitting off into the "fascist-imperialist party" for many years, which is likely one of the reasons for the political divide.