The maddening problem facing conservatives fighting the growth of Big Government is that much of the growth is fertilized by former conservatives who start growing first. The phenomena is most evident in benighted lands that don’t impose term limits and have legislative bodies that meet year around.
And just as a cancerous growth is no respecter of persons, politician growth isn’t limited to the federal government.
Symptoms are evident on the state and local level. In Virginia we have a politician who initially ran for office as a small–government, conservative and unfortunately failed to resist temptation to meddle and build a ‘legacy’ the longer he stayed in the capital.