I don't consider the fiscal policy of the right to be fundamentally about entitlements, debt or smaller government. It wasn't too long ago that Cheney is alleged to have said: "deficits don't matter" and Bush was actually touting "compassionate conservatism." What I consider the fiscal policy of the "right" to be essentially about is marginal tax rates; it was 30 years ago, and it is now. Most of the push of the right for a long time consisted overtly of changes in marginal tax rates for the wealthy and for businesses. Those rates dropped a great deal during Reagan's terms, ticked up only very slightly under Bush 41, went up slightly more under Clinton, and then drooped again under Bush.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213http://visualizingeconomics.com/2007/11/03/nytimes-historical-tax-rates-by-income-group/So, even through the "size" of government or cutting entitlement spending have certainly not, as you correctly note, always been an explicit or emphasized agenda item for Republicans in the last forty years, particularly in the legislative practice, they have been made so now by the persistent GOP tax-cutting agenda. The demand for entitlement cuts right now is fundamentally driven by the tax issue, since deficits have grown so large and so much of the government budget is devoted to them, they cannot be maintained at levels resembling those available now unless we raise taxes again or continue piling up debt. The point is that it is the tax-cutting agenda, which has been
the major priority of the right in the last several decades, that has driven fiscal policy slowly but surely further right. The fact that we're arguing now over 39% levels for the top bracket instead of 35% levels, rather than arguing over 70% levels rather than 50% levels, strikes me as evidence of the tax-cutting agenda's success over recent decades. And, at this precise moment, a Democratic president is trying to secure deeper spending cuts, three times as much, over the next ten years than the GOP House so long as they let him push the top bracket up 4% over the course of the next ten years, and, lo and behold, the Republicans won't agree. "Righty" fiscal policy is about tax rates.