Many of the bizarre conservative caricatures of liberals derive from the belief that if something is a driving issue for conservatives and liberals don't agree, then the exact opposite must be a driving issue for liberals.

For example, conservatives believe in cutting taxes as an end in itself, liberals don't, therefore liberals must believe in raising taxes as an end in itself.

Conservatives claim to believe that shrinking government is always good (though they rarely actually do it), therefore liberals must believe in growing government.

It's a reflection of a black-and-white worldview and seeing everything in relation to themselves. The fact that liberals have other goals entirely and raising taxes when necessary or establishing new government programs are just the means to those goals is too complex to put in a sound bite to try to demonize us.

The sad thing is there was a time not so long ago that there were actual conservative intellectuals who also had more complex goals, and could articulate reasons why they thought things like cutting taxes and limiting government were good. I disagreed with them, but it was possible to have a debate. Now we've had thirty years of corrupt "taxes iz evil" conservatives who use tax cuts as giveaways when they're in power and as a club against Democrats trying to clean up their mess after they leave power.