Punditry and 'pragmatism...'

...didn't exactly do the GOP any good last November, did it? Vox recaps:

Less than five years after Karl Rove mused openly about the possibility of Republican dominance for decades – an idea which was absurd at the time – the Republican Party finds itself in disarray.

...the worst mistake was the Republican Party's post-Bush obsession with so-called pragmatism. But, as events have proven, political pragmatism is anything but pragmatic! The party elite, supported by the party media, put forth one establishment moderate after another, starting with Rudy Giuliani, followed by Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson, before ending up with the worst possible choice, John McCain. (Ideologically speaking, Giuliani may be worse but at least the man can be confirmed to be sound on ferrets.) These men were uniformly considered to be among the electable choices, even though the one man declared to be unelectable, Rep. Ron Paul, turned out to be the only candidate who actually won an election in November 2008.

It's time to ditch the pundits and the 'pragmatism' and return to a better foundation: principles.