Most people love generic platitudes with no details though.
So when you say they "want smaller government" it's that they are literally agreeing with that statement verbatim rather then any plausible version of what that could be (and that's giving them credit: more cynically it's just "take away services from people who aren't me").
See Brexit for another national scale example of this: had anyone been forced to vote for a specific policy, it wouldn't have happened.
Though this is the exact opposite of the strategy of the Prime Minister at the time - he specifically did not want to make plans for Brexit so that very uncertainty could be used to scare people away from it.
He and the rest of the pro EU side feared that any concrete plans would make it look more like a reasonable option.
So when you say they "want smaller government" it's that they are literally agreeing with that statement verbatim rather then any plausible version of what that could be (and that's giving them credit: more cynically it's just "take away services from people who aren't me").
See Brexit for another national scale example of this: had anyone been forced to vote for a specific policy, it wouldn't have happened.