He wasn't grounded in reality at first. It took a FUCKING TV-MOVIE, "The Day After," to convince Saint Ronnie that nuclear war might not be awesome for America.

Yes, the right wing went bananas when he agreed to talks with the Soviets, and even Limbaugh called the talks with Gorbachev "having a Gorbasm," where you had a good feeling about it but it was all lies. The problems the right had with Reagan were quickly forgotten when they elected his analogue, George Bush II, who behaved just like first-term Reagan (saber-rattling, all or nothing, with us or against us) without the turning point of the second. I don't know what TV movie would've done it for Bush, but he exemplified Reagan's first term for both of his own.

I will say that he wouldn't be accepted if what legislation he passed was somehow seen as being as far as he'd go. I've no doubt that if Reagan were around today and able to run, he'd embrace the Tea Party platform without hesitation, grafting their ideals onto his platform.

If Reagan were an up-and-coming politician today, yeah, he'd happily cleave to the Tea Party standard.

By the way, it probably wasn't just "The Day After" that changed Reagan's outlook (though it was a part):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83

The "American reaction" section has a lot of good material on Reagan coming to terms with the realities of nuclear war. I wouldn't go so far as to call him intellectually curious, but his mind was just open enough that a little sanity could squeeze its way in. We saw that nothing could speak sanity to Bush II, and he was still more sane than the Tea Baggers.