The Heritage Foundation Blows Up - WSJ Editorial

The debate over the direction of the post-Trump right is underway, and one of the first casualties is the Heritage Foundation. On Monday some of its most important conservative scholars and their policy departments said they are leaving Heritage to join Mike Pence’s policy shop. Some 15 or more Heritage employees, including the leaders of three prominent policy departments, are jumping to the Advancing American Freedom foundation that the former Vice President established in 2021.

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Heritage once supported free trade; now it is protectionist. It once supported a robust American foreign policy; Heritage purged its defense hawks two years ago. Heritage was a supporter of the originalist judicial revolution and the rule of law; now it defends Mr. Trump’s expansion of executive power whether or not it has a constitutional basis.

The Heritage turn has been the work of Mr. Roberts and the young Tucker Carlson admirers he brought on board. Conservatives need to “know what time it is,” Mr. Roberts likes to say as a sneer at conservatives who believe the movement should still stand for more than a lunge for power.

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Mr. Trump’s agenda has dominated the right for nearly a decade, but the presidential race of 2028 will go a long way to determine what the Republican Party and especially its conservative wing will stand for in the future. Heritage might still play a role under new leadership, but its board has been slow to appreciate the internal dissatisfaction. A think tank is fundamentally a collection of people and donors who believe in certain ideas and principles. Heritage abandoned its principles, it is losing its people, and soon there might not be much left to donate to.

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