A friend running for office

A friend of mine who lives in Maryland is running to a House seat as a republican. This seat is in the hands of a democrat in a district that tends to vote democrat. I do not have a crystal ball but he does not seem to have the best of chances for a win.
When I read what he stands for it reminds me pretty much what most republicans will likely say: lower business taxes, lower capital gains taxes, and tax reduction and simplification.
Everyone who reads that would pretty much agree with it because it makes a lot of sense, who wouldn’t like to pay lower taxes.
He goes on to talk about smaller government. That also sounds like something that I can agree with as well.
But, and there is always a but, we tend to forget that the largest growth of federal government in the last 40 years happened in the 80s under Ronald Reagan, and then with George W Bush, with not only an exorbitant growth of government but of huge deficits, primarily because of lowering of taxes, after inheriting surpluses . And of course the biggest cause of those deficits was the almost doubling in defense budget size plus two wars. So my point here is that you cannot bake the cake and eat, we cannot have lower taxes AND big military expenditures. The US spends 49% of the world’s military expenses. More than all the other industrialized nations combined. We spent close to 700 billion dollars during 2009 between the war on terror and the Department of Defense.
A good friend of mine, that I respect and value his opinion, says that I do not understand, care to understand or respect conservative views.
As much as try to I just cannot understand them.
I understand my friend’s view even though I disagree with him, as I like to base my opinions on facts. And the facts do not back the conservative views. Probably because they are not really conservative views but neo-cons.
Conservatives like Eisenhower and Goldwater would not belong in today's republican party.