What did president Eisenhower mean by "Modern Republicanism"?

Historians have dubbed President Eisenhower's approach
"Modern Republicanism."  In order to understand this topic you must consider the context
of Eisenhower's presidency.  Eisenhower came to office after 20 years of Democratic
presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.  FDR had initiated his famous New
Deal during the Great Depression and Truman followed up WWII with his Fair Deal. The New
Deal was a massive expansion of the scope and responsibility of the federal government
in order to combat the Depression.  With all the new programs of the New Deal came new
bureaucratic positions numbering in the thousands. Beginning with the New Deal, for the
first time, the federal government would affect the daily lives of Americans. Truman
continued a dependence on the federal government, and even expanded the responsibilities
of it in his Fair Deal.  The Fair Deal sought federal powers to stimulate the economy,
provide better educational opportunities, care for the elderly, and even to a very small
degree civil rights for African Americans. The key thing with both programs is that they
intentionally pushed for an active federal government to solve problems in society,
which can be described as a liberal political
outlook.

Eisenhower was a Republican (although the
Democrats had asked him to run for them) working in a postwar society that had grown
dependent on an active federal government guiding the most powerful and influential
country in the world.  Republicans of the late 19th century and the 1920s had mostly
been conservative in the sense of keeping the status quo which meant a laissez-faire
approach to economic issues.  Once the federal government had been reshaped by FDR and
Truman, though, Republicans could not simply have a hands off attitude because the
federal government was simply too big and pervasive. Many conservatives by the 1950s
surely desired a "return to normalcy" just like President Harding had promised following
WWI.  A return to normalcy meant curbing the growth and influence of the federal
government and restoring more power back to the states.  Many affluent Americans wanted
to enjoy the postwar boom and not necessarily fund a massive reform effort in
Washington.

Modern Republicanism is the term given for the
reaction of conservatives to the active and expansive federal government of the 1930s
and 1940s.  This never equated to a dismantling of federal powers, or even a scaling
back of the federal government.  The new era of big government was here to stay and not
even conservatives could (or even wanted to in many cases) cut back the federal
government for Republicans had their own agenda that included the use of federal powers.
What Ike and his Republican predecessors did was to try to slow down federal growth,
although it did and still does continue to grow whether under Democratic or Republican
leadership.