Because not only can they be exceedingly smug and entitled, they can be incredibly petty. A zealous democrat in my family was bitching that public employees in his state, such as Teachers, were getting a really good retirement plan. And they're getting about 3000/ month.

I didn't even know it was psychologically possible to flip flop with such ease from being entitled to benefits to complaining about people getting them.

The point, as embedded in Noah's title, is not to say that all government spending is bad* but to note that Palin's cloud of rhetoric about being a small-government conservative is a load of hooey. She does not practice what she preaches. In fact, she practices the diametrical opposite. Thus, she is a liar and a hypocrite.

* Certainly some gov't spending is bad. I seem to recall a project in the mid-'90s, led by the then-VP, called "Reinventing Government", which reviewed virtually every part of the Executive Branch for waste, implemented merit pay based on customer service surveys, and used a variety of other private-sector and market techniques to improve efficiency and scale back or end ineffective programs. By the end of that administration, the federal budget was in surplus even if one treated FICA taxes as separate from the main budget, and both the non-military discretionary budget as a percentage of GDP, and the corresponding workforce, had shrunk for the first time since the '30s.

The guys responsible for all that spoke at one of the conventions -- but it wasn't the one featuring Palin.

who never considered voting for the Dems.

I think the point of your relative's complaint and your retelling of it is that she or he is brain-damaged and you are hoping to imply that all Democrats are similarly challenged.

Since you are happy with casting your vote according to the rants of a disabled person for whom you have such contempt, perhaps you and your relative can both abstain from voting this year.

I have Democrats in my family and I can tell you first hand that they love to bitch about others, always others. And they are the biggest hypocrites I have ever known. I prefer not to even be around them most of the time.