There's nothing at all wrong with fiscally conservative Democrats - in fact, that describes the vast majority of the people I know. I believe in small, responsible and responsive government, not in Empire America.
The trouble comes with social issues.
With laissez-faire or free-reign capitalism, a company's policies evolve from a single driving motive: profit. It pushes with as great an efficiency as possible. Also with as little regard as possible for the sanctity of the individual lives which make up the company, the laws of the communities in which it operates, or the safety and quality of the environment which it manipulates. It must be forced at every point to be an obedient citizen. It must be compelled to clean up its messes and treat its employees safely and honestly. After all, it would prefer to operate monopolistically with cheap peon labor. It would like to expel its wastes where they stand. A company has no compunction about selling rotting meat, diabetes-causing fast food or highly-addictive, cancer-causing inhalants, so long as it can get away with it and the profit line is unimpaired. That would satisfy the prime directive.
It is the great pride of Republicans that they can nurture the aggressive, dominant mercantile institutions necessary for competition in the community, state and world.
A state, on the other hand, exists solely for the benefit of its citizens, among which are companies. The state is organized for the common good: to protect itself and its citizens and promote overall well-being. In this role the state stands in stark opposition to both the individual human citizen and the company. It must compel the citizen to do its bidding and pay for the privilege, and will use the express threat of violence agains him. It must act to prevent citizens from harming each other or impairing the common good. It must rule companies with an iron hand to prevent the infinite harms that companies willingly perpetrate.
It's the inherent conflict between government, business and citizens which sparks all of the innovations and efficiencies which mark life. Government forces companies to compete against each other; companies always seearch to invent a way around government, or into things government has not yet considered. Citizens spring up to take advantage of any opening given them.
With our country organized this way, social institutions are important, even critically necessary. Because the profit motive is in direct conflict with the concept of care for the individual, it is precisely that area in which state and social institutions are best suited. Those things which are involved with the growth, nurturing, play, health and well-being of human beings are rightly the province of social institutions and the prime concern of the state.
And it is the great pride of Democrats that they attend to the nurturing of these social needs.
So the national conundrum is whether to give the advantage to business or social elements. Since the 80's, the Republicans have ably manipulated the levers of power to the degree that the country's ability to aid and protect its citizens is threatened. The balance has shifted so far away from the social hopes of the 60's that even basic protections - food stamps, for instance - are threatened. Income disparities are greater than at any time since the Robber Baron era, and growing.
In fact, the vast majority of Democrats support efficient business. Because in their view of the social contract, business exists to feed the community (where in the Republican view, business exists to feed the owners of capital).
The evidence that has accrued since the 2010 elections shows that Republicans are concentrating their power in the states, and working hard to kill the social network, and exclude the lower classes and those who favor social reform from the voting booth. It is likely that the Republicans will become generationally dominant, like the ruling parties of Japan and Mexico. And it is likely, too, that by 2050 our society and environment will come to resemble the worst of Mexico's: masses of uneducated and poorly-employed workers; an environment unfit for life.
So if the reason for your desire to enter politics is to try to maintain the social machinery that keeps society stable, educated and well-fed, run with the Democrats. But if you are pragmatic and wish to go with the long-term winner, you must become Republican.
It becomes, basically ethics vs. pocketbook. And the country stopped teaching ethics during the Nixon era.