[rayiner]

> The issue in this case is the avowed principle, on which they have two distinct positions, while pretending they're the same.

There's no "avowed principle"--and conservatism is more of a temperament than a principled framework anyway. Yeah, there's a lot of rhetoric about "freedom" and "small government"--but the conservative audience understands that that means and doesn't mean. Put differently, you're not dunking on a conservative when you say "you say you're for 'limited government' but you support a big department of defense!" The answer is, "well yes, defense is one of the enumerated functions of the federal government in the Constitution, but healthcare isn't."

> Just look at housing in California. You could make housing cheaper, drastically benefiting the poor and working class, through either zoning deregulation or massive public housing investment or both, but the Dems there choose largely to do neither.

Dems believe that government regulation of the economy produces better results. The fact that the principle doesn't really work in the specific case of housing isn't hypocrisy, it's a limitation of the principle.