Liberals have long used universities to do the research that guides their policies. Conservative scholarship, often anathema in leftist-dominated academia, has instead been developed in think-tanks, institutions devoted exclusively to research and policy-making.
The most important conservative think tank, arguably, is the Heritage Foundation, which has generated ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.
A few years ago, Senator Jim DeMint was made president of Heritage. Since then, he has made the organization more and more stridently political, shifting its focus away from its intellectual and research focus.
Now the board of the organization has fired DeMint.
What this means is not completely clear. DeMint is a big supporter of Donald Trump, who used Heritage to help manage his transition. Some board members are old-school conservatives who are suspicious of Trump and his populism. And yet I am hearing that Trump’s loose-cannon advisor Steve Bannon is being considered to take DeMint’s place. But picking him would make the organization even more political. Then again, in the eyes of some Trump supporters, the Heritage Foundation represents the Republican “establishment” that they are rebelling against.
Whether this coup against DeMint is the establishment coming down upon a pro-Trump CEO, or whether it is a pro-Trump insurgency seeking to change the establishment institution isn’t clear. Though DeMint is surely on Trump’s side.
I suspect that, as the board statement says, the problems with DeMint were managerial, not necessarily ideological or political.
But we’ll know more when we see who replaces him.
Isn’t it odd how conservative institutions–Fox News and now the Heritage Foundation–are going through such turmoil, even though the entire government seems to be in conservative hands.
(Disclosure: Years ago, I was a Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.)
From Jessica Taylor, Jim DeMint Ousted From Heritage Foundation In Major Shake-Up : NPR:
Jim DeMint has been ousted as president of the Heritage Foundation, amid growing concerns over the direction of the influential conservative think tank.
While several news organizations had reported in recent days that his departure was imminent, Heritage’s board of trustees did not mince words in a statement Tuesday confirming that the former South Carolina senator’s exit came after a unanimous vote for his removal.
“After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation. While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems,” board Chairman Thomas A. Saunders III said in the statement.
With DeMint’s departure, his predecessor and the organization’s founder, Ed Feulner, will step in as president and CEO in the interim as they search for DeMint’s successor. . . .
Many within the organization felt that DeMint had “made the think tank too bombastic and political — to the detriment of its research and scholarly aims,” Politico wrote, along with the “sense that he’s made the institution too much about himself.”
Photo of the Heritage Foundation building in Washington, D.C., by Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33596357
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