The Coffee Party put a link on Facebook to "How Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality", Fareed Zacharia, Time, 2011-06-16. When Zacharia was a student, he interviewed George Will, who told him that "Conservativism is true." Although Zacharia thought the statement a bit arrogant, he wrote that down through the ages conservative thought has been based on how the world was, not on some abstract principles. Current American "conservatives" have gone from the pre-Reagan realism to a laundry list of abstract principles.
I knew the Republican Party was in trouble when it nominated Ronald Reagan, an abstractionist, over John Anderson, a pragmatist. I knew it was in even further trouble when it described those Republicans who didn't fully subscribe to a laundry list of abstract principles as RINOs - Republicans in name only. Actually RINOs are realists insist no orthodoxy.
