Today in the USA, the Republican party stands for small government. While the Democracts, the more liberal party, are seen as the party of strong government and centralisation (by US standards).

However, now that I'm studying the history of the two ideologies, their fundamental beliefs seem to have been the otherway around.

On the republican side, the early theorists took a very collectivist approach. Studying Rousseau, he seems to be in many ways some kind of proto-communist. The talk of a collective will of all those in the 'social contract' as being in the hands of a minority who, rather than accepting the people's actual will, instead make laws based on what they ought to will for the common good; smacks of Lenin's idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, from his belief that the people do not know what is good for them and so the government must rule them for their own good. In some ways, it seems that Marx's ideology is simply an extension of Rousseau's, building on the idea of small, self-sufficient communes, and expanding the communal society to a global level.

In contrast, the liberal writers all for limiting the government. Locke for example saw it as merely existing to ensure the preservation of property, and that people were in fact surrendering natural rights in order to live under a constitution. Locke was amongst the first to come up with something resembling the modern system of checks and balances to limit the government from growing too powerful, through his legislative/executive/federative system.

So, why is the US Republican party the party of small government, and the Democrats seen as that of a stronger government?