Federalism

Is there anybody in this country who actually has a consistent position on federalism? I had no sooner finished reading this Scott Lemiuex post making the usual points about most conservatives' hypocrisy in citing federalism as a reason to oppose civil rights laws, when I came upon JMG at Grist calling the federal government "totalitarian" for wanting to override state and local GMO bans. Maybe we need to just admit that we all basically care about substantive policy outcomes, and so it's fine for the feds to take charge if and only if they're doing so in the service of substantively good policies. It doesn't sound very noble, but at least it's true.