When one has thought through these many and complex issues, and accepted Reform, one is a Reformer for life. By this calculation, Reform's spectacular gains in 1993 were irreversible, part of a long-term trend. Reform could only gain. Neither of them is correct because each of them ignores the other. There was a large protest vote inflating Reform's 1993 results, and Reform is a growing social movement whose real gains are irreversible unless or until it is confronted by another principled social movement.
Reform is populist, federalist and almost capitalist.
This places an immense gulf between Reform and traditional parties and traditional thinking. Reform holds that basic policies should flow up from the grassroots to party officials, rather than the reverse. Populism is based, ultimately, on the principle that the individual mind every individual mind is fully competent to know the facts of reality. Only Joe Citizen is an expert on the life and interests of Joe Citizen. Populism, along with democracy and freedom itself, is a political corollary of the philosophical advocacy of reason.