First, it has: https://foreignpolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/dod_cha.... As a fraction of the economy, military spending is a little over one-third of what it was the year I was born. It’s actually pretty much the only part of government that has shrunk.

Second, the military is one of the few aspects of government that’s clearly supposed to be done at a federal level. Why do you think there is anything inconsistent about conservatives not cutting back government uniformly?

Without knowing your age - I'm guessing you were born during the cold war/before the fall of the Berlin Wall (or at some point in the immediate aftermath). That event alone (and not some small government principle) was responsible for less military money allocated to counteracting the specter of a Soviet world order

> Second, the military is one of the few aspects of government that’s clearly supposed to be done at a federal level.

According to the 18th-century conception, the army indeed becomes a federal concern in wartime, but on an everyday peacetime basis, the training of soldiers was supposed to be done within militias regulated by the states.

> Why do you think there is anything inconsistent about conservatives not cutting back government uniformly?

There are 2 things that are not being taken into account.

First, historic trends are not reversed by relatively recent changes in allocation to the US military.

Second relatively recent changes in military utility of manpower vs aircraft vs cruise missile has made certain kinds of spending obsolete. A modern, effective military does not require the same logistics anymore, so of course spending has gone down.

There is nothing inconsistent about conservatives (Republicans) expanding military spending, as they always have and will continue to do so within the bounds of recommendations from the industrial military complex.