EDIT: I understand the concern with wide vs tall for specific vehicles.
Two dissimilar things are being compared: Width vs Height --- You can have a wide tire that is tall (relative to a short tire) and you can have a wide tire that is short (relative to a tall tire). Do the same thing for a skinny tire and you should get the point.Wider tires (relative to skinnier tires) can cause/create some issues if you are not prepared for them:
1) Front tires rubbing against parts (control arms & anti-sway bar in my case) in the wheel well is a common issue if you aren't running spacers and/or wheels with enough backspacing. Some times you can have a problem with the rear tire rubbing also, but hopefully not due to turning.
2) Stress on steering components. The extra contact area with the terrain surface can add significant resistance to turning which impacts steering components.
3) Splashing of water and slinging of dirt, rocks, and mud. The extra overhang, especially if you go really wide due to the additional offset you need to avoid issue
, will allow the tires to sling stuff around.
4) Stress on axle shafts. While not likely to be a concern, the extra width can add stress to the axle shafts in turning situations, especially in situations of really sticky tires with locked axles (not axles with lockers, but axles where the locker is locked up tight (a spool)).
5) MPG hit. More surface area equals more resistance which will theoretically impact your MPGs. Maybe not much, but theoretically there will be an impact.
When considering your tires, think about how you will use them and what you really to get out of them (long life, look tough, Load E rating, comfort on road, etc). Assign some sort of weighting to the various features that makes sense to you. I like to use Excel to focus my attention when comparing things, so I would create a matrix that captures the various tires I'm considering (Y axis) and matches that to features offered by the tire (X axis) (sticky-ness, gas mileage impact, longevity/life, max weight load for towing/hauling, on-road, cost, availability after the sale, etc, etc). Then find the tire that has the highest calculated value based on your weighting and tire feature matrix. Then, forget everything you did and see what you can find for cheap that looks good and that you think will work for your needs
This site will let you play with the various tire and wheel sizes and compare them visually and with measurements. http://www.rimsntires.com/specspro.jsp