You mean... like the Democratic party since Bill Clinton?
Kinda sorta. He did some clever shit by grabbing a couple of good Republican programs, slapping a new name on them, and then claiming them as his own. And they worked! But Bill Clinton still had that essential Democrat belief that government can solve problems. It can't, really. It can incentivize the private sector to focus on a set of problems, but government involvement in a problem rarely helps the situation. And, it leads to more government. If Bill Clinton could have shaken off that central tenet of the Democratic platform, then he would have been even more effective.
I'm curious, can you mention any programs that lead to "more government" or that didn't involve financial incentives that haven't worked? I can't think of any.
It depends on how you define "programs". But, generally speaking, the Republicans try to legislate behaviour: Sex toys are illegal, anal sex is illegal, gay marriage is illegal, etc, etc, etc. One of the oodles of problems with legislating behaviour is that these laws are generally unenforceable, and require MORE government to monitor people's activities to see if they are behaving properly. Maybe it's a single form that you need to have notarized that attests that you are your partner are of different genders, and have been since birth. A form that needs to be designed, printed, notarized, stored, and referenced by everyone else down the line as you move towards your wedding. Or maybe it is a security camera monitoring a public space, which produces 24 hours of video every day that needs to be monitored/reviewed by a "technician", who needs to be paid, have benefits, and leave, and shifts, and managers to schedule the shifts of the different techs, and then they need backups and off-site storage for a period of X years, and.... The thing that everyone needs to understand from all walks of political life, is that every new piece of legislation has innumerable unintended consequences and introduces new loopholes. Case in point: Reckless driving laws have been on the books since that first accident in NYC in 1909. And yet, at some point, some moron decided that "drunk driving" was different than "reckless driving" and therefore we needed a new law. So now we have a drunk driving law. But we don't have a heroin driving law. Or a marijuana driving law. Or a Xanax driving law. Or a Monster driving law. So now we have literally THOUSANDS of loopholes in the driving code, and every single one needs new legislation to close them. Which then introduces new uncertainties... and on and on and on.