Heritage Foundation Smashing Up Over Difficult 'To Be Or Not To Be Nazis' Question
Guess which way they are leaning!
At one point in the 2024 election season, Kevin Roberts, the shiny-pated dean of intellectual soup kitchen the Heritage Foundation, claimed that the country was in the midst of a second American Revolution, one which would “remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be.” In other words, the head of the rancid dumpster from which tumbled the garbage that was Project 2025 was telling us, you damn leftists better sit your asses down and shut up while the conservatives overrun the country. Otherwise, they might have to water the tree of liberty with liberal blood.
So it is ironic that one year into Donald Trump’s second term in office, Heritage is becoming one of the Right’s most notable casualties of this alleged revolution, thanks to Roberts himself having the cerebral capacity of the peeled potato that his head resembles.
The problems that have led Heritage to this point broke into the open two months ago. That was when human boat shoe Tucker Carlson welcomed notorious antisemite Nick Fuentes to his podcast. The two had a very wholesome chat about how Fuentes isn’t an antisemite. Why, he loves The Jews! He’s just asking questions about why they control all the media and pretend the Holocaust wasn’t a mass hallucination brought on by eating spoiled gefilte fish.
Carlson was roundly condemned for platforming Fuentes. Since the human boat shoe has a loose affiliation with Heritage, Roberts was being pressured to denounce Carlson and distance the think tank from him. He refused, in a smarmy video denouncing anyone who wanted to cancel this great friend of Heritage and distract the Right from its important work of turning the entire Left into ground beef.
Then, actual surprise! The Heritage staff and some of its outside backers rebelled. All of them seemed to have been caught by surprise to find out that there were neo-Nazis and white supremacists in their political coalition, which is a little like if Gregor Samsa was totally fine with being a bug until his landlord came by to spray his apartment for roaches.
A handful of employees resigned from Heritage, or were fired for insubordination. Then over the weekend, the trickle suddenly became a flood. The Wall Street Journal reported that about 15 staffers resigned at once, wiping out most of Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
We’re just going to let that sit right there for a sec, so we can all admire it together.
Most of the employees who resigned are moving over to another think tank, Advancing American Freedom, which was founded by Mike Pence. There they hope to reconstitute the Meese center, rebranding it the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law.
Basically, Heritage this weekend became the People’s Front of Judea scene from Life of Brian.
Additionally, a couple of legal scholars cut ties with Heritage. One, Josh Blackman, posted his resignation letter on Reason, and it is to the point, albeit with that stuffy academic tone that makes the writer sound like he has crammed himself up his own ass:
Heritage came to a crashing halt after your infamous video. Your initial remarks were indefensible. Your apology was underwhelming. And the lack of any meaningful followup over the past three months has been telling. For reasons only you know, you aligned the Heritage Foundation with the rising tide of antisemitism on the right.
The reason — no pun intended — is that antisemitism has always been a problem on the Right, it has just been somewhat overshadowed in recent decades by all the racism.
Heritage announced that what remains of its own Meese Institute would be run by Cully Stimson and Hans von Spakovsky. But then later on Monday, Heritage announced that both of those two men had also resigned. The think tank’s offices must now look as barren as the Gobi Desert.
Imagine how terrible you have to be to drive a couple of nimrods like Stimson and von Spakovsky away. Stimson is a loon who once had to resign from the Pentagon after he threatened law firms that represented Guantanamo Bay prisoners pro bono. Von Spakovsky is an election fraud truther who pops up every few years to remind everyone that he is terrified of Black people voting.
The Heritage Foundation has been around for 52 years. After the weekend it had, it is fair to wonder if it will make it to 53.
This whole blow-up seems to be an extension of the civil war around MAGA and the larger conservative movement, a war that is breaking out as people on the Right start looking ahead past the reign of Donald Trump. The thinking, as expressed by longtime donor Art Pope, seems to be that with the personalist nature of Trump’s rule ending, Republicans need to start talking about principles again. Stop laughing, he’s serious:
“President Trump’s term is coming to an end,” he said. “The Republican Party is not going to see really a primary among candidates but a primary on principles and fundamental policies.”
There is a lot of jockeying by conservative groups and people for influence in whatever a post-Trump GOP looks like. But what’s interesting here is that this is all coming in Year One of Trump’s second term. A couple of years ago, the idea of looking past Trump would have been unthinkable for these people. They would have been too terrified of mean tweets. Even six months ago, this topic would have been verboten as Trump was making noise about end-running the 22nd Amendment.
But now, with the president so clearly mentally diminished that even Republicans have noticed, with Trump spending most of his presidency redecorating the White House to look like Catherine the Great’s bathroom, the GOP can almost openly contemplate life after the sentient sweet potato the party has been following like whipped puppies for a decade.
We suppose this is as close to good news as we could reasonably hope for at this stage, that the Republican Party isn’t acting like it thinks the reich will continue for a thousand years. So, yay?
‘Tis the season to support Wonkette!
I am so tired of these dramatic grifters sucking all the air out of the country. Exhausting.
Welcome to the new game show, "Who is the real Conservative?"