The idea, very roughly speaking, is to highlight the ways that government helps the wealthy and well-connected—and then strip away those programs and policies, so that, finally, the little guy can get ahead. In some tellings, it's about opposing "bigness"—as in big business and big government. These days, the agenda typically includes items like eliminating Obamacare’s “risk corridors,” which protect insurers from unexpected losses, and downscaling or eliminating the Export-Import Bank, which provides loan guarantees to American companies that can't obtain cheap credit from the market. The risk corridors amount to an insurance company “bailout,” conservatives say, while the Export-Import loans amount to a huge gift for Boeing and a few other companies. Among those making the case in Washington right now is Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah and a leader of the right wing. Rush Limbaugh has taken up the banner, too—most recently as a cudgel against immigration reform.

In principle, clearing out overly cozy and sometimes corrupt relationships between government and business is a worthy goal—one, in fact, that would have plenty of support on the left. Liberals rarely celebrate these arrangements. They merely tolerate them as politically necessary means for achieving broader goals, whether it's helping millions of people to get health insurance or keeping manufacturing jobs in the U.S. If conservatives are up for achieving those same goals without forking over cash to corporations, liberals will stand with them. Similarly, if conservatives want to improve transparency or curb lobbying, so that corporations find it harder to manipulate the political system, there’s a vast network of progressive-leaning, good-government organizations working on those causes already.

But these aren’t the sorts of changes most conservatives have in mind. They don’t want to eliminate Obamacare’s reliance on private insurers. They want to eliminate Obamacare itself—and replace it either with nothing or with something that would expose millions more to crushing medical bills. Similarly, it’s not as if conservatives targeting the Export-Import bank have come up with some great new agenda for bolstering wages or creating jobs, either for the short- or the long-term. On the contrary, they continue to oppose measures like extended unemployment insurance (which at the very least would help the currently unemployed pay their bills) and infrastructure spending (which would take advantage of low borrowing rates to make investments that even some relatively conservative economists agree make a lot of sense right now).

It’s hard to imagine how such a conservative agenda would reduce inequality even a little bit. If anything, it would seem to increase inequality. Say what you will about the Affordable Care Act, but it includes a pretty substantial redistribution of money down the income scale. Taking it away means taking away Medicaid and tax credits for the poor and (to a lesser extent) the middle class, even if it also means taking away some profits from insurance companies.