The right's platform has devolved into, essentially, "whatever owns the libs"

Eh, I'm not going to dispute the validity of Cleek's Law, but ~everything Trump, et al, are doing has been an extremely popular idea with different segments of the right for thirty, forty years.

That goes for DOGE, both the idea of "drowning the government in a bathtub" and the specific cuts they made (eg, wrecking foreign aid), that goes for ICE, even the Iran War, which is widely regarded as the unpopular thing that might actually sink the administration, is something a solid 30% of the base has been salivating over since Reagan and are only upset that he hasn't "finished the job" yet.

If you think it's all purely reactionary you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years.

	▲	dgellow 18 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What you describe is the definition of reactionary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
	▲	jfengel 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But they didn't drown the government in a bathtub. They cut a bunch of tiny programs that they were ideologically opposed to, at a savings amounting to a rounding error. All of the things that could be counted as "big government" were left untouched, or expanded. They didn't even pretend to reduce the size of government. They just engaged in some petty grudges. Which is, as you say, exactly what his voters want. They just pretend that it's "small government", but it absolutely is not.