Those of us who know about Project 2025–and were properly horrified by it–also know that those 900+ pages attacking everything that makes America America was a product of the Heritage Foundation. (Now we know just what sort of “heritage” that organization was created to protect.)
Earlier this month, Paul Krugman traced the Foundation’s history, in a newsletter he titled “The Decline and Fall of the Heritage Foundation.”
Krugman began with the “fall” part– the recent controversy triggered by the response of Keven Roberts, Heritage’s president, to Tucker Carlson’s interview of rabid neo-Nazi and anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes. In a video, Roberts defended Carlson and attributed the uproar to “the globalist class,” a turn of phrase that–as Krugman notes–is routinely used to attack Jews.
Why did Roberts weigh in on the Carlson-Fuentes controversy? He obviously felt he needed to express support for the right of conservatives to be conspiracy-theory antisemites — despite the fact that Heritage itself has an antisemitism task force. Unsurprisingly, many of the task force members have now resigned.
Media reporting on this story has been excellent and revealing. However, I believe that much of the commentary misjudges the true nature of Heritage, portraying it as a genuine think tank that picked the wrong leader or was corrupted by MAGA.
According to Krugman, Heritage has always been a fraud rather than a genuine think-tank, “a propaganda mill cosplaying as a research institution.” Its problem now is that its “original scam” was designed for a different time. Back in the Reagan years the Right’s bigotry and intolerance were far more discreet; those prejudices were more subtly employed to elect Republicans who could then be counted on to deliver deregulation and tax cuts. Heritage was there to lend superficial respectability to policies that were regressive and discriminatory, and that overwhelmingly benefitted the rich.
Krugman writes that he first encountered Heritage when the organization was working for repeal of the Estate tax, arguing that the tax was a “massive burden on small businesses and farms, which was simply a lie.”
In 2004 only around 300 small businesses and farms owed any estate tax at all. No, I’m not missing zeroes. And the number has gone down over time. These days basically no small businesses or farms pay the tax.
So Heritage wasn’t doing research. It was just pumping out dishonest propaganda.
Krugman cited another example, this one from 2011, the year Heritage released widely ridiculed projections about the positive effects we might expect of Paul Ryan’s budget proposals–again, producing propaganda rather than economic research.
But telling lies on behalf of the wealthy isn’t enough in the MAGA era. To be a right-winger in good standing you also have to be a sexist, a racist, and an anti-Semite, while promoting QAnon and other conspiracy theories.
Krugman cites the “economists” employed by Heritage as examples of its true purpose. In 2014. it was Stephen Moore, a fixture in right-wing circles, who mainstream economists describe as utterly incompetent. He was replaced by E.J. Antoni, who Trump tried to install as head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Antoni’s nomination was withdrawn after reports surfaced that his Twitter account was filled with “sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.” (CNN also reported that Antoni “repeatedly tweeted that liberal economist Paul Krugman was a pedophile, a smear for which there is no evidence – and one he also hurled at former President Joe Biden and former FBI director James Comey.”)
Heritage lists Antoni as its “Chief Economist.”
Krugman is correct when he insists that Heritage’s history is consistent with–and illustrative of– the story of the modern Right as a whole.
Heritage was never a respectable institution doing honest research. It was always in the business of telling lies on behalf of its wealthy supporters. But now it’s trying to turn itself into a MAGA/Groyper institution, less focused on telling economic lies and more focused on bigotry and conspiracy theories.
Krugman’s analyses are amply corroborated by Project 2025, which Wikipedia accurately describes as a political effort to “reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies.”
Roberts hasn’t changed the historic character of Heritage. He has merely–and probably accidentally– illustrated its true mission.
I have always maintained that most, if not all, “Conservative Think Tanks”, have the answer, total unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism, and set out to “prove” that it is the only answer to everything.
“Liberal Think Tanks”. perhaps ask liberal questions (How can we achieve racial equality or how can we help the poor) but start with a question and then do the research.
It’s like the difference between “Creation Science” and real Science (or mainstream, if you prefer).
The Heritage Institution, like so any other conservative not for profit organizations, has seen its purpose morphed into nothing but a propaganda source to be trotted out when needed in some Republican scheme to gain more power and money. It has served the MAGA movement for the past nine years, as it did so for Rush Limbaugh before that. In fact, the use of propaganda seems to be the entire tool bag for Trump’s form of government where the public’s perception of reality is steered daily in order to bolster the grip on the populace and the grift from oil prices to the stock market.
The country is being had.
I didn’t read the name, Charles Koch, in Krugman’s analysis of the Heritage Foundation. I wonder why he left that part out? Because, most people know about the Koch’s dark network which includes much more than the Heritage Foundation. Much much more!
Not surprisingly, our own Governor is a Heritage Foundation toadie, or Koch shill. His “nonprofit” policy arm is run by a former employee of Heritage. #shocking
Even more shocking, the Indiana Capital Chronicle won’t mention Koch or the Heritage Foundation’s role in our governor’s policies either. What’s with these journalists who pull their punches? 😉
Even more shocked that Krugman didn’t mention that “Obamacare” came from the Heritage Foundation. It wasn’t even remotely progressive since it was a gift to the health insurance oligarchy.
Many references to the “globalist class” are not anti-semitic, but they are anti-Zionist. The name I read for it from independent journalists is the “Anglo-Zionist Empire” which accurately depicts the global class running the show in the West.
One last comment about the Ayn Rand Libertarians is they have almost zero empathy for mankind. Most are transhumanists. If you look at the new breed from Silicon Valley, they are really Libertarian Techno Feudalists who are angry at the core against government which is quite ironic since most of them owe their fortunes to the government. They also equate being rich to being smart. As we know, Elon Musk is THEE example that richness does not equal intelligence.
On a local level, I befriended a local Entrepreneur professor at Ball State who came from out West and completed her thesis on the Koch brothers network. She had no idea that BSU was in deep with the Koch’s, and they had no idea she exposed the Koch’s for what they were. Every project she started in the community, was thwarted by the administration. She quickly moved on to North Carolina. LOL
This poses the following…
If the Heritage Foundation is such an organization unworthy of support, why did the DP embrace a supposed HC policy based upon the recommendations of such an unworthy source?
It’s seemingly performative. Btw, ya gotta love Rachel Maddow attending the funeral service of Dick Cheney.
It’s a big club and you’re not in it.—- George Carlin
A book to read: Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
Ian,
If you look at the EXTENSIVE documentation that the Democratic Party put together on the right-winged insurrection, not one mention of Koch or the Publix heiress who paid millions for transportation costs of the insurrectionists. Not. One. Word.
In my best Keanu Reeves’ impression, “Yeah, it’s performative.”
I was thinking the same thing Todd was thinking. Where is the reference to Charlie Koch, whose clique of besties is limited to one percenters. He holds sway, not just over the Heritage Foundation, but over a ton of universities, who have fallen for the myth of the Poor Pitiful Pearls that are today’s college conservatives.
That Heritage Foundation plan was Romney Care in Massachusetts. It was working well there. Obama thought that the Republicans would love to see their own plan endorsed by a Democratic President. He sorely underestimated the disdain the Republicans felt for him. They not only didn’t vote for their own plan, they brought suit against it for every reason they could think of.
As to why Democratic leadership takes money from Koch, well the only thing I can say about that is all money is green, but Koch money is green and legal.
The core belief of right-wing worldviews is elitism, which is disguised by calling left-wing people “elites”. How else can you explain the right of right-wing people to live at the expense of other groups identified by their skin color, religion, different culture, or country of origin?
the heritage and ALEC and the rest, was a quest of big money to control. throw in social medias magaphone,christians who use religion to control other$ and a racist prick from NYC,and ya get the modern day Moses and its religion. being a working class who reads few subjects and for decades about the working classes fall into a credit mad world where thats another ox bow across your lifes shoulders,instead of the living wage and our own control of our future. imagine if main street ruled wall street? instead were fed a minute by minute ridicule by these institutions. they are laughing at us,and they have taken over us. in my world of talking points with other blue collars left and right, this has been my main subject.unfortunately,most have no idea who or what these orgs do, or what they have done to them. if there was civics education that was required in basic education,this subject should be why we have a civics education. social media has become the spin agent. X has been the recent forefront of think tank style of antaganism.
see >guardian:small changes to,,for you,feed on X can rapidly increase politcal polorisation. tech ed:Robert Booth,UK, its a science used for a con game to take over the minds and maga it..
Today all my anger is on the Russian attack November 19, on UKRAINE.