neconservatism, like any form of idealism becomes largely redundant upon contact with reality
I don't think this is a useful way of looking at idealism in politics at all, especially when politics is understood as encompassing virtually all human social activity
ideals matter in a metanarrative sense beyond their "contact with reality"
in the sense that believing in a thing is some portion of willing that that thing into existence; ideals are competing political metarguments
in an applied sense: politicians never truly fulfill their promises, but in the act of voicing them, they have to try to fulfill some portion of them
what you're saying is the inverse of saying that any compromise to achieve part of an ideal is equivalent to total compromise rendering that achievement meaningless