Republicans as the party of "smaller government"

My sister-in-law, Kate, had a great post about the RNC last week and the comments on it were from her friends/fellow bloggers who are overwhelmingly conservative. You really should read them. Over and over again they said that they didn't want to have their paychecks pay for things they didn't believe in and that Democrats would just spend all their money on people who did not work to earn money. I couldn't believe that people were falling for that old party line about Democrats being tax and spend and Republicans cutting taxes and shrinking the government! George W. Bush arrived in office in January 2001 with a surplus in the government coffers. We now have over a 3 trillion dollar debt. But yes, the money was not spent on poor people. It was spent to wage wars and to line the pockets of corporations and already wealthy Americans. I can see why you might prefer that because these ARE working people, I mean, no one is going to argue that those poor soldiers in Iraq don't work harder than just about any other American, and yes the CEOs of large corporations also worked their way to get there, even if now they mostly run companies into the ground and take huge payouts to leave. So I see where our philisophical differences about where to spend money come into play. I just sometimes question the Christian principles of people who call themselves "Christian" but don't believe in taking care of our fellow man. It really confuses me because a great deal of the Republicans I know/am familiar with fall into this camp.