One of the staples of the conservative ideology is small government. President Richard Nixon, a Republican, attempted to practice this movement with his "New Federalism." New federalism was the idea of reversing the current course of power in the government from the federal to the states. This is an argument literally as old as the country itself, with Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists.

To understand the reasoning for new federalism, one must look at the context of the time period. Leading up to Nixon, President Lyndon Johnson had vastly grown the federal government in terms of power and welfare programs. LBJ's "Great Society" was costly and needed the power of the federal government behind it. Nixon and the Republicans saw this as an overreach and decided to trend the country's power in the opposite direction.

The key principle of new federalism was Washington sending power and funds to the states, not the other way around. Nixon envisioned states governing themselves, with little red tape from the feds. Some of the accomplishments of new federalism was a revenue sharing program between the federal and state governments, a revamp of the welfare system, and the Community Development Block Grant. As you can see, the idea of "New Federalism" was simply to allow state and local governments to decide for themselves without interference from Washington.