The Heritage Foundation Heralds Its Populist Evolution

Plus: More on DeSantis and abortion.

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks alongside Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts during the foundation's 50th Anniversary Leadership Summit at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on April 21, 2023, in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Happy Monday! Only 12 percent of respondents in a recent Wall Street Journal-NORC poll said they are “very happy,” the smallest share of “very happy” respondents on record since NORC started conducting its general social survey more than 50 years ago. But don’t think your political foes are getting a better deal than you, the Journal’s Aaron Zitner reports: “Neither political party claims a disproportionate share of the very happy.”

Up to Speed

  • President Joe Biden, age 80, is reportedly gearing up to launch his long-anticipated 2024 reelection campaign via a video announcement on Tuesday, the four-year anniversary of his 2020 presidential campaign launch. “The people briefed on the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, cautioned that the official announcement could be delayed,” the Washington Post reported on Thursday.
  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—the anti-vaccine activist, environmental lawyer, and son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy—announced Wednesday that he will run for president in 2024, joining self-help author Marianne Williamson as the second candidate to challenge Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination this cycle.
  • Former Vice President Mike Pence told CBS’ Face the Nation that if he decides to run for president in 2024, his announcement will come “well before late June.” Pence will join Steve Hayes and Sarah Isgur on The Dispatch Podcast later this week.
  • West Virginia’s Republican Gov. Jim Justice is gearing up to announce his long-anticipated bid for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s seat in 2024, Politico reported on Friday. A formal announcement on Thursday would kick off an expensive and closely watched GOP primary battle between Justice (an early favorite of the National Republican Senatorial Committee) and Club for Growth-backed Rep. Alex Mooney, who announced his Senate bid in November and has since racked up support from a handful of state legislators. Not that Justice is counting. “I’m really glad that there were — and I think you named three or four legislators who were supportive of Alex Mooney,” Justice told MetroNews last week. “That means now that he’s up to seven votes in the state, and I’m hoping he’s going to get more than that and make this thing more fun if I decide to run.”
  • RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel announced Thursday that the second GOP presidential primary debate will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. 
  • North Carolina’s GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson officially launched his gubernatorial campaign on Saturday, joining Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein and Republican State Treasurer Dale Folwell in a crowded field to succeed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited. 
  • Never Back Down, the pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC, is courting Republicans in the Iowa Legislature as it builds grassroots support for the Florida governor’s presumed presidential bid, The Dispatch has learned. Sources say veteran Republican operative David Polyansky has been at the state capitol in Des Moines meeting with Republican legislators to encourage them to support DeSantis in 2024. Polyansky, who knows the political terrain in the key early primary states, is engaged in similar activities for Never Back Down in South Carolina. In 2016, Polyansky advised Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Heritage at 50

The Heritage Foundation celebrated its 50th anniversary last week with the triumphant message that the most prominent conservative think tank in Washington is fully aligned with the Republican party’s recent embrace of nationalist populism.

In his opening remarks Thursday, Heritage President Kevin Roberts argued that the old conservative coalition was insufficient to face down today’s “tyrannical, elitist, anti-America, anti-Constitution” left. 

“Decades of frustration and failure have shown us that the old Washington red team of free marketers, neoconservatives, and evangelicals alone is simply not enough,” Roberts said to the crowd of donors and notables at the Gaylord National Resort just outside of D.C.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Earl King

    The GOP is so lost it may end up in the wilderness for a few more cycles. Progressive Democrats offer up chaos only to then say they are the only ones who can fix the chaos. Our Foreign Policy is in chaos. We are losing to China because of our State Dept. is more concerned in pushing progressive social justice policies and green policies that simply are not as attractive as economics and trade. Countries do not want to be lectured on social justice. I admit I also do not want to be lectured. Present me with an outline of an issue, a solution and I am perfectly capable of deciding whether it has merit or not. Countries are not looking for Priests to confess too.

    Besides economics and trade China is pitching security. From who I am not quite sure about but this is the gamble Saudi Arabia has gambled on. That China can keep Iran from bullying Saudi Arabia.

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  2. Bobby D

    I’ve grown weary of this populist-nationalist argument that the old coalition on the right wasn’t sufficient to stop the left, particularly when it comes to social and cultural issues. That misstates the problem. The problem is that coalitions are not homogeneous and that many on the right find themselves in partial agreement with the left on many social and cultural issues. In that sense, the real problem is that the nationalist-populist folks have staked out positions on social and cultural issues that reflect minority viewpoints within the country.

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    1. AJLiberty

      I agree with this. It's unproven that hawks, free marketers, and social conservatives are insufficient to win elections. This assertion smells of rationalization. 2008 was a perfect storm of war fatigue and the housing collapse that hit the GOP. It's not that the Left's ideas were that popular. It's that the Right engineered a war that languished and were in the White House when the market collapsed.

      It is true that with the end of the Cold War the GOP has struggled to come upon energizing themes, but it does not then mean that populism should fill that gulf. In fact, populism is like the opposite of carefully reasoned conservative solutions...it is emotional and generally only loosely attached to facts (see CRT, anti-vax, fear of trans, and don't say gay). Even where the GOP might have a winning hand on illegal immigration, it over-plays it and dips into white nationalism waters.

      Populism has drawn the GOP to be skeptical about supporting Ukraine (and even NATO) or criticizing Putin -- both decidedly UNpopular with the electorate. The one arena where it might be popular, cynicism about trade with China, it really offers little new, retreating away from new markets and mounting futile trade wars. The proposed solutions over-simplify complex problems that require nuance.

      So populism tends to trap the GOP into focusing on culture war issues that too often have little relevance to people's macro lives. Yes, we don't want men competing in women's sports, but how much oxygen is it worth? Do we really want to be the party that uses government power to punish corporations for stating a position? I'm just not sure that we're growing a tent that can broadly win. It seems like we are getting smaller, energizing our opponents, and ceding the healthy middle of the poltical spectrum. Until we confront that, I just see more losing.

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      1. BPhillips

        Very well said.

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      2. Bobby D

        I see a lot of populism as an something of an effort by the social and cultural conservatives to punish other conservatives for having broken ranks with them on issues like same-sex marriage. Their numbers are sufficient within the GOP to get many of their candidates through the primaries, only to lose in the general election. They figure that other conservatives will get tired of losing and come around on pushing gays back into the closet.

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  3. GregL

    Heritage Foundation has become a joke under its new leadership. Rather than a bastion of conservative thought and intellectual discourse, it has become a grown-up version of Turning Point USA.

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      Abridge683

      It's interesting that over on Instagram I've been deluged with Hillsdale College push-polls and other commercial but very MAGA-related posts. I wonder if this is part of a new push. Where did the money come from to put forward Hillsdale's philosophy? I doubt if it's the college.

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      1. Russell J

        Andrew Egger is a Hillsdale grad and he makes the point that the marketing arm is fairly independent of the education arm. They are pretty aggressive at asking for political donations. They give away free content in exchange for emails or addresses. The Imprimis newsletter was once worth reading.

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      2. Avatar photo
        Mudskipper

        Yep. I am receiving Hillsdale posts almost every day on Facebook. I have toyed with telling Facebook that I never want to see another Hillsdale post again, but I think I'll take a page from the antelopes and keep an eye on the hyena.

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  4. Rune485

    Yeah. Lowry made a sad little attempt to pump DeSantis’ Heritage appearance at NR, and as usual began by pretending Heritage was still conservative.

    Didn’t bother mentioning that Carlson was warmly received when he gave the keynote address as well. It seems that Roberts may even offer him a job.

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      Kurt

      He offered him a job before he even got booted out of FNC.

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  5. Learnin4life

    I really enjoy seeing how many pejorative terms some Repub/conservatives can string together to describe their political opponents. Heritage's president used four in his rant as follows, "tyrannical, elitist, anti-America, anti-Constitution” left. If you were ever to have a conversation with someone meeting this criteria I would argue you were most likely speaking to the recently defeated former president.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ the old Washington red team of free marketers, neoconservatives, and evangelicals alone is simply not enough,””

    In other words, Heritage will continue down its path of jettisoning every last conservative principle until there is nothing left except personal power and enrichment.

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    1. Russell J

      It is mostly about getting donations which is influenced by being connected to elected officials. Maybe just a re-phrasing, but I think the order is important.

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    2. Bobby D

      I don’t know that it’s a pure power grab. I think it’s more an issue of prioritizing the achievement of certain social and cultural goals at the expense of all else. It’s not that the old coalition was too weak to stand up to the left on these issues. Rather, it’s the case that many liberty-focused conservatives agree with the left on these issues, albeit for different reasons.

      It does seem odd to accuse others as being anti-Constitution. After all, it’s the populists who would dispense with the Constitution to achieve the grand goal of criminalizing DQSH.

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        Ben Connelly

        Yeah no I agree. It’s not a pure power grab. Yet.

        DQSH?

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        1. Bobby D

          Drag Queen Story Hour. It was the existence of a DQSH event that gave rise to Ahmari’s lashing out at David French.

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            Ben Connelly

            Yeah I remember that. Never saw it abbreviated that way.

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    3. Avatar photo
      Scarlette Tarte

      This is the right's new "call to action".

      That the left has taken over so much, so successfully and it's so horrible, that nothing short of an authoritarian takeover and undertaking unconstitutional actions will "save the country".

      Just like every authoritarian that has ever lived, these actions won't just be applied to "the liberal enemies", but indeed, they will end up applying them to everyone to control everything.

      They always do. What is wrong with people that they always fall for this nonsense? "We must abandon our principles to save our principles".

      It never works.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Ben Connelly

        “ What is wrong with people that they always fall for this nonsense?”

        It’s probably human nature.

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          Kurt

          See Carl Sagan re: bamboozle.

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  7. Avatar photo
    Mattjabour

    "In his opening remarks Thursday, Heritage President Kevin Roberts argued that the old conservative coalition was insufficient to face down today’s “tyrannical, elitist, anti-America, anti-Constitution” left. "

    I see they're quintupling down on the whole "look what you made me do" argument. Barreling down a waterfall, and all the captain can say is "Full speed ahead!"

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  8. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    Imagine telling people that organizations like Heritage would be completely transformed by Trump in 2014.

    Once again it's hard to understand DeSantis hiding from his abortion law that he signed. I can't imagine who he thinks he's fooling. I'm pretty cynical about the lies Republicans can get away with these days, but I just can't see this one working.

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    1. Dynamis878

      I often like to imagine the shock my 2014 self would have, if I could travel back in time:

      "You are going to hate the Heritage Foundation"

      "You are going to eagerly vote for Joe Biden twice in a row"

      "The White House will server 1,000 burger combo meals for a celebration"

      We are living in the Upside-Down

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  9. DTruitt

    What the hell does "populism" - whatever the hell that means - have to do with ultra nationalists, neo isolationists, and modern day nazis? That is non sequitur.

    Populism ought to mean, in the simplest of definitions, that which is popular with the People. There is nothing at all popular about ultra nationalism, neo isolationism, and naziism.

    Get your stories straight. If Heritage people are into that shit, they need to be shitcanned, completely, and stop treating them as "conservative". There is absolutely nothing conservative with those three whack job extremist ideologies, and never has been, and never will be. There is nothing "old" about conservatism - it is what it is.

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      Pat Riot

      Nationalists, isolationists and Nazis were all "populist" if you define that term as, "advocating popular ideas that are problematic in practice" e.g. "free beer for everybody".

      It's a very happy popular thought that we don't need a military anymore and we can just withdraw from the world. I'd certainly love to live in that world. And the money we'd save would be very... popular. For the Nazis, the idea that their country's problems came from one particular ethnic group (and not say from the many mistakes the country had made previously as a whole) was very... popular.

      It's important to understand populism: many people believe, mistakenly, that Trump's catastrophic response to COVID hurt him in the election, but the numbers show that it in fact helped him in many important areas. Many people were hurt economically by COVID, so Trump saying it was an impeachment hoax concocted by the Democrats because they hate America was... a wonderful thing to believe for those people. Indeed, the very last thing many people wanted to hear was that the pandemic was real and thus the lockdowns were absolutely necessary.

      Agree 100% about not calling Heritage "conservative". Indeed, populism and nationalism are the very opposites of conservatism.

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      1. DTruitt

        When exactly were those three ideologies “popular”, as in a clear majority of the population was behind them?

        Answer: for ultra nationalists and Nazis in the US, never. For isolationists, that was popular between November 11, 1918 and December 6, 1941, yes … but never since.

        By the way isolationism between the world wars was popular with both the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans. December 7, 1941 changed a majority of minds.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Scarlette Tarte

          Populism itself is not conservative.

          Regardless of all the other stuff being added in or not.

          Populism is not in any way, conservative

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          Pat Riot

          I guess I don't use the terms "populism" and "majoritism" the same way. Populism just means supporting populist policies and initiatives. Whether it achieves power or not is a different story. The Nazis achieved power, initially at least, with a plurality of the vote. But was Hitler was selling was certainly "populism" as the word is used today.

          Roll forward to circa 2015 in the USA, you have a political union between populists selling policies that appeal to a certain segment of the population (MAGA) in a political alliance with other segments (abortion abolitionists, business interests, etc.). Trump flipped millions of Obama voters in order to win, for instance.

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      JohnM.

      The Heritage Foundation was a very principled conservative outfit once upon a time.
      As for 'populism'? Well, this is what it means:
      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43301423

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  10. Randall Briggs

    'In his opening remarks Thursday, Heritage President Kevin Roberts argued that the old conservative coalition was insufficient to face down today’s “tyrannical, elitist, anti-America, anti-Constitution” left. '

    What he didn't say on the record is that Heritage will now support politicians who advocate an authoritarian, anti-American, anti-Constitutional right.

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    1. DTruitt

      They may as well adopt their former name, the American Bund - who were Hitler's apologists in the US prior to the Pearl Harbor attacks which of course instantly killed off the Bund.

      There is nothing at all the least bit conservative or "right" about naziism. There is a reason its actual name was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party", which in English was shortened to "Nazi".

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      1. BadgerBill

        I hope you’re not digging up the old trope that because the word “socialist” was in their name that they were not right wing. That is complete and utter nonsense. Their opponents were the Social-Democrats and the communists in Weimar Germany. They were as right wing as right wing can be. That old “they weren’t right wing because they have ‘socialist’ in their name is absolutely and completely wrong.

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        1. Randall Briggs

          Jonah Goldberg's argument that they were as much a party of the left as a party of the right is based on the same phenomenon you can see in the current GOP. The Trumpists hate a lot of groups, but the group they seem to hate the most is Old Guard Republicans. In Russia under the Kerensky provisional social-democrat government, the Bolsheviks had to purge the Mensheviks within the Communist Party before they could turn on Kerensky. Similarly, the Nazis had to purge the Socialists and other leftist groups before turning on what was left of the German right wing. They didn't just have "socialist" in their name. They argued that they were the REAL socialists. They used the symbology of the hammer and sickle, just as the communists did. They controlled the economy. They used the iconography of happy peasants working in the fields.

          Nazism was not conservative. It was a radical overturning of the established order. It wasn't conserving anything, unless you consider it to have conserved pre-Christian paganism in Germany.

          Shifting to fascism (Nazism's cousin), Mussolini, after forming the Fascist party, told his former socialist colleagues that he would always be a socialist.

          The simple left-right line fails to capture the spectrum of ideologies very well.

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          Porouke

          Paging Jonah Goldberg…

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      2. Mary Stine

        DTruitt, do you ever wonder if the American Bund just went underground and are now resurfacing? As a young woman I stumbled upon an estate sale in Missouri. On the elaborate 2nd floor was a library devoted to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, complete with a skin-topped desk and a bar of soap. There was a plaque on the desk thanking the American woman who had donated so much to the Nazi cause and made places like Auschwitz successful exterminatories. That was in 1972. I still shudder remembering it and the fact that someone believed reducing humans to leather and soap was a fine idea. The room and the many gilt-bound copies of Mein Kampf were in excellent condition. I got the distinct feeling that had been in use until recent times.

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        Mattjabour

        Randall's comment didn't say the word "Nazi" at all. Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.

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