"Lauded" is extreme, but the response would be quite different.
Back when there was a push for universal healthcare in the 90s, the Republicans proposed a plan that was broadly similar to the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, which makes sense, given the disproportionate influence the center-right Blue Dogs at the time. In the 90s, adherents of America's right-wing political culture considered this a reasonable, mostly private sector solution to looming economic problems. Nonetheless, looking at broadly the same policy ten years later and invited to participate in the formative process, the Republican Party asserted Obama and the left-wing forces that supported it were dangerous radicals with whom it was impossible to even begin negotiation, while conservative grassroots empathetically argued that what Obama was trying to accomplish amounted to communism. Odd how a reasoned, mostly private sector alternative to socialized medicine transforms into dangerous radicialism in a ten-year period.
Later on, when the political climate changed and new forms of Obama criticism developed, the conservative response started incorporating less "socialism" and more "incompetence" and "crony capitalism."
Looking at the forces that shape political responses in this country, and looking particularly at the conservative responses to Republican forms of statism, I can fairly state they are largely comfortable with statism that has its origin in the machinations of the Republican Party.
