Here's a pretty good example of what I was talking about earlier regarding liberals and conservatives merely making different value judgments about when government intervention is appropriate. Virginia's culture warrior Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is suing the Obama administration over a fringe interpretation of the Tenth Amendment because he sees the Affordable Care Act as an unconstitutional infringement on personal liberty. Cuccinelli opposes expansion of government for the purpose of making sure more Americans have health-care coverage, but he's also anti-choice and therefore perfectly comfortable with circumventing the Virginia General Assembly by issuing legal opinions that force abortion clinics to conform to onerous standards that would cause many of them to shut down.
In Cuccinelli's view, a law passed by majorities in Congress and signed by the duly elected president of the United States is tyranny, while circumventing the legislative branch by imposing restrictions on abortion he couldn't get passed as a state legislator is fulfilling the will of the people. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has tried framing this as a women's health issue, but as Monica Potts points out, that's completely bogus. Despite an ideological commitment to "small government," Cuccinelli and McDonnell are happy with big-government policies that make it harder for women to choose when to carry a pregnancy to term. Just not with policies that would ensure they have health-care coverage after they're born. There may be a rhetorical commitment to small government there, but it's only rhetorical.
