What voters think is largely irrelevant. Republican politicians campaign by claiming everything government does doesn't work, and once in office they do everything possible to ensure those claims become true.
The republican politicians then have to craft a message that will get enough normal, not rich people to vote them into office. So they talk about hot-button culture war issues, selecting the positions they must take to get numbers they need (abortion, gun rights, "freedom of speech," gay marriage, immigrants, vaccines, etc etc), all the while reminding their base that the government (except the military and police) is bad.
So that is say, normal people who vote republican can be very nice and reasonable, and they have one or two things that strongly motivates them to vote for a terribly harmful platform.