et cetera

In case you’ve managed to avoid news recently, a “conservative” American president has authorized spending $100 billion so far to nationalize giant financial companies to avoid an economic disaster.  Powerful finance experts who work for him are openly discussing expanding the program to $0.7 to $1 trillion.

For as long as I’ve been alive, the Republican Party in the United States has disapproved of corporate regulation to prevent this sort of thing, because it preferred to minimize the size and scope of government, and feels that free markets can and should take care of themselves.  The most powerful member of the Republican Party of the United States has now abruptly decided that it’s cool to borrow half of the federal government’s yearly budget from foreign governments to finance a gigantic deprivatization program.  Am I missing some intermediate step here?  What’s going on with the Republican party?

Are there any Republicans out there who can explain this to me?  Perhaps I’m just not looking at this the correct way.