There Will be Blood

[Ryft]

"Unemployed? Fuck em. No health care coverage? Die quickly, then."

—neither of which Tea Party conservatives assert, Mr. Grayson.

Only in the conservative pipe dream, where the benevolent and perfect free market creates abundance for all if only the evil government could be destroyed.

The Tea Party is not an anarchist movement; i.e., they do not want the government destroyed. Reducing the federal government, particularly Congress, in its scope and authority to the powers enumerated in the U.S. Constitution does not equate to destroying the federal government. This also includes a serious reduction of centralized power, recalling that the 10th Amendment is still in the Constitution.

In reality, deregulation ...

They do not want deregulation. They want less regulation, specifically from the federal government which, again, is constrained by specific powers enumerated by the Constitution. All other regulation is to be left to the several states. So much power being centralized to the federal government contradicts the national framework of a constitutional republic, where the states govern in themselves whatever is not delegated to the federal government (e.g., entitlement programs, insurance regulations, public education, etc.).

... deregulation has been a disaster for the American economy and it caused the most recent meltdown.

It was not deregulation so much as the federal government manipulating the banking and housing industries with ideological legislation that has "been a disaster" and "caused the most recent meltdown." For example, creating new regulatory oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that stiffened enforcement of fair housing and fair lending laws (cf. HUD-imposed housing goals for financing of affordable housing, especially in central cities and other under-served areas), mandating Fannie and Freddie to devote more of their lending to purchase mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities. Lenders and CRA-regulated banks were thus encouraged to create more loans through high-risk instruments (e.g., negative-amortization subprime mortgages), which Fannie and Freddie continued buying and turning into mortgage-backed securities that were sold on global secondary markets to investors, who assumed the government would back these securities it mandated into existence. When the bottom fell out of the housing market—and borrowers couldn't refinance their ARMs while housing prices fell with foreclosures rising, etc.—due to government-created 'moral hazard' through legislation, enterprises, financial rules and innovations like mortgage-backed securities minted at the behest of Congress, the collapse extended far beyond lenders and borrowers, devestating not only the market but also international investors and financial institutions as untold billions of dollars vanished.

Congress and the executive created this problem with ideological legislation and regulatory extortion of the financial industries into poorly-considered lending practices under the threat of prosecution as 'unfair lenders', which they compounded through incentives for lenders by having government-sponsored enterprises buy the paper and resell it on the global market. As Ed Morrissey said, "What we need is a way to make sure that government doesn't interfere in lending markets again. We need to eliminate GSEs entirely and let borrowers and lenders find each other in the marketplace. If government would quit trying to pick winners and losers, we wouldn't find ourselves in this grave financial crisis."

But deregulation nearly drove us into another depression and the government saved the day.

It is almost incomprehensible that you could actually believe that. After strict government regulation caused the savings and loan crisis from the 60s through the 80s, a new and largely unregulated financial services industry emerged and performed extraordinarily well—until the Clinton administration from the mid-90s onward resulted in what we're dealing with today. We have decades upon decades of evidence that government intervention in the market wreaks havoc upon it (Utt 2008, Wallison 2008). One can debate political ideology but facts are what they are.

• Utt, R. D. (2008). The Subprime Mortgage Market Collapse: A primer on the causes and possible solutions. The Heritage Foundation.
  
• Wallison, P. J. (2008). Bear Facts: The flawed case for tighter regulation of securities firms. Financial Services Outlook. American Enterprise Institute.
  

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The hostile attitude towards social entitlements.

What "hostile attitude" toward entitlements? It is not a partisan issue: entitlement programs are broke. Whether Republican or Democrat or independent, everyone recognizes this fact and must contend with it. For example, Social Security tax revenues will fall into permanent cash-flow deficit as of 2016, and will exhaust the claim on general revenues by 2040. The worse thing to do is ignore it and carry on as always.