Mike Pence, (Heritage) Foundation President

Shortly after he left office in 2021, I gave a TV interview and was asked about Vice President Pence’s future. I said I suspected he’d wind up leading the Heritage Foundation or some other institution committed to keeping the principles and values of conservatism alive in the wilderness.

Today comes word that Mike Pence is now leading the Heritage Foundation in all but name.

The Board Members of the Heritage Foundation, who were placed there to preserve the integrity of the institution, have instead blessed a vision to turn it into a political project. The Heritage Foundation is no longer an institution of principles and ideals, and can no longer stand up to the President if the President is Donald Trump.

In tying the Heritage Foundation so personally to a political project, the Board members have decided one man is worth more than Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Ed Meese, and the legal center named after him, and more than a dozen other employees of the Heritage Foundation who have all now jumped ship to Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom.

Free market economics has given way to populist protectionist policy.

Robust American leadership in the world has given way to populist accommodationism, rejected by Reagan and Ed Feulner.

Gatekeeping remains, but now the antisemites, Nick Fuentes apologists, and conspiracy theorists have been let in, and the traditional conservatives shut out.

Rush Limbaugh used to refer to the Keepers Of Odd Knowledge Society. They’re now taking over the offices of those who have left to Advancing American Freedom. I await new white papers that are just asking questions.

The world can and should accommodate both the Heritage Foundation and Advancing American Freedom.

I’d just note how the internal project of the populist right seems to be to wear the skin of the conservative movement for legitimacy while casting aside the brains and ideas. It’s The Silence of the Lambs as a think tank project. I marvel at how many of those who ask, “What has conservatism conserved?” are so quick to take root in these conservative institutions and, for purposes of media branding, gladly call themselves conservatives to the press while denouncing conservatism on their Twitter feeds.

Despite my sarcasm, I wish both sides well. I just prefer my conservatism rooted in, well, advancing American freedoms, and that includes being willing to stand up to the Trump Administration when needed, instead of scuttling data projects that would have shown the negative impact of tariffs in American communities.

But I’d add a word of caution to those who actually are rooting for the demise of the Heritage Foundation. As I noted on Twitter, Kevin Roberts has been loyal and supportive to social conservatives in ways the Heritage Foundation sometimes was not in the past.

I know many Heritage staffers who, over the years, were treated unkindly and/or unserious for being primarily social conservatives. The fiscal conservatives ruled the roost, and the compromises of voice and vision were always on the social conservative side. I trust Mike Pence and Advancing American Freedom will not sideline or use social conservatives as props. After all, Advancing American Freedom was the only major voice on the right to oppose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — a man who drove his wife to commit suicide and who has undoubtedly paid for more abortions than all other cabinet secretaries in American history combined.

I trust Mike Pence. And I note the animosity directed to Pence is because of his disloyalty not to an idea, but to a man. Therein lies now that which separates Advancing American Freedom from the Heritage Foundation, advancing ideas or a man.