Something similar happened in the early ’90s. It looked as though a political consensus favoring smaller government was taking shape. Republicans with a well-considered smaller-govt agenda took over the Congress and the Democrats started to cut deals with them. Then the Oklahoma City bombing happened, the Clinton Democrats outmaneuvered the Gingrich Republicans over the government shutdown, and the smaller-government impetus was weakened considerably (we did get cap-gains tax cuts, welfare and a few other reforms that did a lot of good in the subsequent decade).
But then Sept. 11, 2001 and the Middle East war kicked much of what was left of the smaller-government movement over the far horizon, and since 2009 a hard-Left executive branch has been extending and doing its best to entrench post-Reagan government expansion.
There are tides in the affairs of men. The problem with tides is that they can go out for a long time before they reverse and start to come in. Let’s hope that the statist tide has finally run its course and that we are near a reversal.