When did the GOP lose touch with reality?

David Frum has an excellent article in New York magazine on his disenchantment with this current iteration of the Republican Party. He's particularly well-placed in his estimation of Obama critics:

Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.

(Image: "Candidates before a Republican presidential debate in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011." Evan Vucci, via CBS News)