David Stockman was director of the Office of Management and Budget during Ronald Reagan's first term. He wrote a sharp criticism of current Republican thinking in "Paul Ryan's Fairy-Tale Budget Plan", New York Times, 2012-08-13.
Among other things Stockman points out that for all the budget cutting in "entitlements", Ryan wants to fund the "warfare state" with a budget twice what Eisenhower thought was sufficient to contain the Soviet threat, adjusted for inflation. Stockman writes that we have no real credible threat from any "advanced industrial state" and that Iran is benighted but irrelevant.
You might not agree with everything Stockman wrote, but you'll find his thinking is more in tune with reality than what currently passes for conservatism, that is, conserve the entitlements of large corporations and their "right" to raid the Treasury and the pockets of savers.
