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Later she explained the two strands of current conservative thought, “Proudly speaking, there are two strands of conservative thinking in America right now. There’s libertarian conservatism and then authoritarian conservatism. Small leave me alone government here and big intrusive government over here. And of course, nobody calls themselves an authoritarian conservative…Nobody says I am for big, intrusive government, vote for me. They all say they are on the libertarian side, no matter what kind of Republican is running on what kind of platform, they all say they’re for smaller government, limited government, personal freedom. Those are their buzz words.”
She continued by examining the last decade of Republican policies, “But look at the Republican policies over the last decade. Expanding the National Security Agency, NSA, so it has the ability to wiretap phone calls without a warrant and sift through e-mails, look through library records. Is that small leave me alone government or is that big intrusive government? In the last administration, with a Republican president and Republican controlled Congress, they increased the size of the federal government by more than any other time since World War II when they created the Department of Homeland Security. Small government conservatives, supposedly, put in place a policy of indefinite detention, allowing an American citizen to be arrested and held without charges for years and years and years. I mean, they support the death penalty. The government’s right to kill you. You want to talk about balancing the power of the individual versus the power of the government? Sort of doesn’t get more fundamental than that. Republicans all say they are small government libertarian conservatives. But what they have done when they have power is authoritarian big government stuff.