I'm not sure why the states' rights issue figures into this so heavily - states have all sorts of their own regulations, and the reason for Federal regulations reaching your toothpaste is to avoid the states making it a nightmare for businesses to operate across all fifty, which they otherwise would. A lot of that Federal regulation isn't the product of socialists, it's the product of corporations acting in their own interests.
And that is the point - you can not like the politics, etc, but guess what? Businesses do like it. They spend money (surprise) to convince the Government to give them more of your money. Dismantling consumer protections and labor protections without dismantling the corporate welfare first leaves you in a marketplace where business has unyielding government support, and individuals have zero. The predictable consequence is a decline in wages and standards of living in favour of increased profits for the relatively small number of people who run the larger businesses. The problem gets worse as their advantage increases; they'll make it tougher for new businesses to compete and continue to pay themselves with public money.
That situation is not the fault of government that is too large. It's the fault of permitting private businesses to buy influence; instead of resisting that trend, conservatives have eaten the line and now spend all of their energy going after the people whose welfare amounts to scraps from the table.
Do you really think businesses
like spending money on politicians and government?
You don't think they have anything better they'd prefer to be spending that $$$ on?
Businesses "buy" influence because they have to. When government gets too big -- and that's exactly what's happened since FDR and ESPECIALLY since LBJ and thus it's become the only way they can do things. Both democrats and republicans receive big money from big business. Obama is in bed with the same people he preaches against to his base. He's "the same old thing," forget the "hopy changy" stuff.
It would be nice if no one could "buy" influence (outside the voting booth that is) but government has become such a Godzilla that it has become impossible to function otherwise. We have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world and the regulatory structure is asphyxiating the country.
This is one reason why jobs are leaving America and moving over to China. It's not just the cost of labor, it's the costs of doing business in America. It's actually less expensive to open a business in China or another nearby country there than it is here.