It's a popular Conservative/Tea Party belief that smaller government is better government. They believe that the Federal government should be kept weak so as not to threaten the sovereignty of the people.
The problem with that is America has already had two small, central governments already. Both of them failed within a decade. And apparently, both of them have been forgotten by Conservatives.
Before the Constitution was ratified in 1787, the colonies were held together by the Articles of Confederation. The Articles were pretty much a slightly stronger version of NATO. The States had lots of autonomy, and the Federal government, by law, had to beg the states for taxes to support itself. When it was clear to everyone that the federal government could not stand on its own, that's about when the bigger, stronger U.S. Constitution was drawn up.
And then there was the Southern Confederacy, conceived ostensibly for the preservation of State's Rights...Slavery and Cotton notwithstanding. The Confederacy's reason for going to war was because the Federal government, ironically, was imposing its will on the Southern states. The Confederates lost. So now, we have a "federally mandated, top-down, one-size-fits-all, unrestricted, unquestionable" law saying that no person can own another person as property.
For all the Reaganesque talk about "government is the problem", conservatives can't see that it has already failed in the past... twice. They also fail to see that government, with all its flaws, is a great benefit to a great number of people.
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