This far-right conservative think tank is more than the editor-in-chief of “Mandate for Leadership” and sponsor of Project 2025. In their own words, they are “much more than a think tank.” In fact, they are also a huge, effective lobbying force, and the public face of Christian neoconservatism.
The Heritage Foundation was begun in February 1973, during the Nixon Administration, by Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner with funding provided by Joseph Coors. A look at Weyrich’s political and religious development will help to understand the underpinnings of The Heritage Foundation and its Christian far-right agenda.
Weyrich (1942-2008), who grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, was a religious conservative, who broke with the Latin Catholic Church after its liberalization under Pope John XXIII at the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965. Weyrich then became ordained as a deacon in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church (aka Melkite Byzantine Catholic), which remained religiously ultra conservative. He was a political activist starting in his late teens and early 20s, when he was active in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. He coined the term “moral majority,” and started an organization with that name with Jerry Falwell, a well-known Christian televangelist and activist, in 1979. The New York Times obituary describes Weyrich as “the conservative thinker and strategist whose iron principles, articulate fervor and organization-building skills were instrumental in propelling the right wing of the Republican Party to power and prominence in the 1980s and ’90s….one of the far right’s most unbending ideologues.” One senses that even today, his character provides the moral fiber of Heritage.
Feulner should not be neglected either. According to Heritage: “After serving as president from 1977 to 2013, Feulner served as president again for a brief period in 2017. Heritage’s influence grew immensely that year. After President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, there were a number of conservative policy victories, most notably tax reform, and The Heritage Foundation played a role in all of them. In just its first year, the Trump administration embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations from Heritage’s five “Mandate for Leadership” publications. ‘Ed Feulner has made Heritage not just a permanent institution on Capitol Hill, but the flagship organization of the entire conservative movement,’ Board Chairman Thomas A. Saunders said in December 2012.
Again in their words, Heritage works to: “Provide solutions, mobilize conservatives, and train leaders.” This last element is a major push now as the MAGA GOP intends to replace career employees in federal agencies and departments with trained conservative activists, whose goal is to destroy “big government,” which I want to remind you includes the Department of Education!
Much of the development of neoconservatism occurred during the global background of the Cold War (1947-1991) and the awakening of those of us on the margins of U.S. society: Blacks, other people of color, women, and movements, such as Ralph Nader calling out corporate greed, consumer neglect, especially in terms of safety and health. Also awareness of the dangers of fossil fuels, which actually started in the 1950s, pesticides and other corporate pollutants, which culminated along with acknowledgement and demands for change in Earth Day and the strengthening of the environmental movement.
It’s somewhat understandable that those who chose to not fully examine these issues saw them only as threats to big business, societal changes including acceptance of diversity as too radical for some, and easily ascribed these “threats” to communism and the fear mongering of that created on public television, now a broadly utilized media, by Joesph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, among others. We see the same thread today from neoconservatives who equate socialism with communism, an incorrect association. As well, considering “socialism” as what many of us think of as basic responsibilities of a democratic Republic to care for its citizens, e.g., healthcare, early childhood education and nutrition, affordable housing and education leading to a variety of careers.
Here are some of Heritage’s “notable achievements” in their words.
- Inspiring President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative and pushing American withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, both of which paved the way to defend America from missile attacks.
- The historic 1996 welfare reform legislation that decreased child poverty and significantly increased employment. [The facts are different. It did not reduce child poverty nor did it increase it a there were temporary measures for young childen, but left older children uncared for as single mothers had to go to work, creating more social problems.]
- The expansion of school choice via education savings accounts to 12 states and counting.
- Success at preventing amnesty in multiple immigration bills, including major legislation in 2007 and 2018.
- The Trump administration’s embrace of 64% of Heritage policy prescriptions through its annual budget, regulatory guidance, or other actions.
- Recommending candidates for vacant seats that ultimately shaped the future of the Supreme Court that delivered the landmark decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
They started producing “Mandate for Leadership” for president-elect Ronald Reagan providing details for how to deal with each government department and agency. By the end of his first year in office, 60% of their recommendations had been put into effect, e.g., beginning the dismantling of the EPA, squelching research on AIDS, and implementing the disaster for the majority of Americans of trickle-down economics. They have continued to develop them for most, if not all, presidential elections. The basis of Project 2025 and the 2025 Mandate for Leadership is their 2023 Mandate for Leadership.
