The conservative movement is suffering from borderline personality disorder otherwise known as Emotional Dysregulation Disorder.  Let’s consider for a moment that the conservative movement is the personification of the modern day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The conservative Mr. Hyde constantly talks about the need for “smaller government” to “reduce government”.  He wants a government small enough that he can drown it in a bathtub but just large enough to investigate women’s vaginas (a big preoccupation of Mr. Hyde when he’s not trying to blame gays, muslims and latinos for all the country’s ills.)  Slash government services like Medicaid, food stamps, worker retraining and unemployment.  Get rid of funding for Planned Parenthood and PBS.  Privatize government programs like Medicare and Social Security.  Lower tax cuts for the rich because they are the job creators.  Eliminate and reduce government employees who are a drain on the economy because they only cost taxpayers money.  The conservative Mr. Hyde simply can not be controlled and will not negotiate with anyone … country be damned.

The conservative Dr. Jekyll has big dreams for America.  Even though America already spends more than the top 14 countries in the world combined (source), he would like to increase defense spending by an additional 25%.  He is a revolutionary thinker who knows that America can afford this increase in government spending; in his eyes – America can’t afford NOT TO increase spending on defense.  No matter what it costs … he knows its worth it and the American people will be better off for it.  Any attempt to reduce defense spending would be anathema … unpatriotic …. weak … misguided.

That’s the conservative movement right now.  They want to cut the size of government but they want to increase defense spending.  Well – if 58% of government workers are already defense related and you increase the size of the already HUGE number of government workers … how can you also reduce the size of government?  You could tax people more and conservatives have come to the conclusion that 47% of Americans are not doing their part because they don’t pay income taxes.  So those seniors, students and members of military could be looking for a tax increase … coming to an IRS office near you.  But for all of that rhetoric – the likely answer is that they’ll have to cut important government programs.  Medicare.  Social Security.  Medicaid.  Cops.  Teachers.  Firefighters.  PBS.  Funding Planned Parenthood.  Research and Development.  Pell Grants.

The Fact File gives us a couple of great charts to view federal employment in a different way HERE. This chart shows a breakdown of federal government employees by department:

Of course this government takeover can really be put into perspective when you compare the largesse to private sector jobs.  As you can see here … federal government jobs make up the vast majority of employment since Obama came into power with 1.25% of employment which is significantly larger than the 1.25% under Bush </sarcasm>.

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