The problem is the assumption here that "more spending" = "left".
^^^^^^
Non-military spending has increased beyond rate of inflation. That seems like a fairly good metric, particularly given that this spending is primarily in things like entitlements or education. And it's not just the US where that's held true either, although we're a particularly glaring example. What else would you go by? What have "small government" conservatives succeeded at other than some token cuts/reforms to programs like ADFC in the 1990s which accounts for fairly little of the budget compared to all the other expenditures?
And I agree with you on this. The modern day "conservative" likely favours as much or maybe even more spending increases than liberals.
