Is this just a case of "free market for me, but merchantilism for thee"?
This can be described as "cognitive dissonance". There is also a widely observed phenomenon where people are much less likely to recognize their own faults, even if they are able to observe the same fault in people around them.
I think it factors down to priorities. When a state's industry (therefore state government revenues and employment -- the leading indicator of whether voters are happy with their current representatives) is threatened, politicians will conveniently ignore the fact that their actions are the opposite of "free market".
The same kind of rent-seeking (economic term, not related to being a landlord) is visible in the telecom area (incumbents lobbying for legislation to prevent local governments from competing as broadband ISPs), the cable industry (lobbying local governments to prevent competition by higher speed internet competition), car dealerships lobbbying to defend existing state laws that prevent Tesla from selling directly to consumers, etc.
And the larger problem in the social media / echo chamber era is that political parties encourage and demand unity, so people of the same political party are not likely to call them out on their crony legislation. It is sad, because conservative voters are more likely to only hear and trust news if it comes from conservative voices (just as liberals are more likely to trust news only if it comes from liberal voices).
I see it as a personal challenge to figure out how to better distribute objective news to people of all political beliefs and I'm investigating exploiting behavior / cognitive science to do it. Message me if anyone has ideas or a similar desire.
The interesting thing is that conservatives can be pro-business in this sense while sharing the exact same basic economics as the progressives. When push comes to shove, the "establishment" Republicans will agree with their Democrat colleagues on such ideas as government being useful in stimulating demand as also stimulating the economy. Where they disagree is who should receive the first benefits of such stimulus (business vs. some "class" based criteria). Actual advocates of free markets usually don't accept a Keynesian view of economics.
[edit for additional point] Conservatives do like to paint themselves "capitalists" without any firm definition of the word. For the same reason progressives also like to brand conservatives as both capitalists and free-marketeers (even though they aren't) as the progressives like to turn the whole matter into a package deal... meaning they want to conflate free market thinking with conservative "pro-business thinking".... many more boogeymen to point at being pro-business.
Like many organizations in the last couple of years, they decided to go all-in opposing Trump, only to discover that they didn't have anywhere near as many chips with their putative voting base as they thought, because it has been the perception (key word, please do not ignore it, arguing about whether this is "really" the case would be missing the point) among the conservative base that "their" politicians said conservative things to get elected, but promptly shed them the moment they won the election. It is probably fair to say that it is the perception of almost everybody who does not live in Washington DC that there aren't really any free-market conservative politicians whose actions are accurately described by that term; each of the two major sides may have their own reasons for believing that, but both do.
So probably just about the only people who would not describe this as hypocrisy are the actual politicians in question. There has been plenty of hypocrisy to go around lately, unfortunately.
That may have been why people voted for Trump, but he's probably going to make them look like amateurs. Trump policy is going to bear very little relation to his campaign speeches.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/02/28/will-it-be-trump-...
vs (note dates)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-22/goldman-i...
Trump is a nationalist, populist phenomenon. Trump's base is only in favor of free market ideals when they aren't on the losing end of competition. Because China is full of supermen or something it must be stopped.
But now I will make a claim: I wouldn't be surprised he actually ends up being a free-er market candidate than any the Right has managed to elect in a while. Yes, even considering his protectionism. This is because, in practice, nobody the Right has elected in a long time has been particularly free-market at all, not because in absolute terms Trump is "pro-free market" in some sort of libertarian ideal, because he obviously isn't.
Oh, and "universally opposed by economists" doesn't carry much weight with me anymore. The 2008 recession/depression was virtually universally not predicted by economists, and the results of the response from the government were virtually universally predicted to be much better than they actually turned out to be. Mainstream economists are all but discredited to me until they actually admit that they have a problem, but they have not.
Also, the somewhat recent emerging consensus of "Well, globalism and free trade is generally good, but maybe it does in fact bone the American poor and middle class in the process as the rich get richer" would tend to suggest that protecting the American poor and middle class would traditionally be a Democratic priority, but it doesn't seem to be. Again, by way of explanation, you may begin to see the appeal for the people getting boned of electing someone who even claims to be standing for their interests, as opposed to people who stand actively against them and often deploy mockery or tells them that they deserve it if they complain. It's not exactly a winning political strategy for votes.
If it is a bill that is actually of any import you will sooner or later certainly see opinion columns from conservative, free-market columns decrying it, though they're a little bit in short supply relative to liberal, environmentally-conscious columnists, so you'll have to look harder.
Political parties are made of multiple people and these people are wildly inconsistent in applying what ought to ostensibly be their party's principles, especially once you get down to state-legislature local-politics matters.
Most "conservative, free market politicians" aren't in Wyoming, so it's an error to hear one talk and assume that Wyoming politicians agree.
HN probably gets most of its news either from California or New York(most of the MSM are based there). So you're more likely to hear issues framed from the perspective of California and New York, which both have rent control and such. It would be an error to assume that Oregon or Vermont have the same values, even if some map somewhere shows them colored the same. Other states wouldn't just disagree; they'd frame the issue differently.
Every state is different. As an example, Kentucky seems to churn out free-market types like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie pretty consistently. I imagine Utah would focus on the finance industry, and using the government to enforce Mormon values. Apparently Wyoming values their coal and gas industries.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13457548
I'll also add that if you look back to 70's the Democratic Presidents have been more fiscally conservative than the Republican ones. That just supports the comment I link to above, which I think is 100% correct.
Republicans of the last 30 years care about one thing: reduce taxes on the wealthy.
The second thing they care about: reducing regulations on businesses. They want to be able to pollute and discriminate as much as they want, to increase shareholder value.
The fact that people vote against their own best interest has flabbergasted me for the last 20+ years.
The state legislature fear regulation that would limit coal and force a quota of renewable that may be more expensive, while a "cheaper"(coal, gas, etc) resource exists. I try not to see this as a "Look at us we love coal" and more of a "We want cheap energy(and jobs) through any means necessary".
Side note: This isn't my personal view, just an argument I continuously see in this fight.
And I honestly don't even care if solar panels are created elsewhere for cheaper than market rates. That means the utility would be able to supply Wyoming energy subsidized by Chinese tax payers. Eventually China will have to deal with their own tax deficits. They have already started to cancel coal power plant projects[1].
[1] China Cancels 103 Coal Plants, Mindful of Smog and Wasted Capacity (NYTimes, 2017-01-18) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/.../china-coal-powe...