What is the future for conservative ideas?

What is the future for conservative ideas?

By 

Daniel W. Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything.

March 25, 2021 at 9:24 a.m. GMT+9

Whither the Heritage Foundation?

Zack Smith, legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center, speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on the D.C. statehood bill on March 22. (Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call/AP)

Earlier this week, Kay Coles James stepped down as president of the Heritage Foundation, along with Executive Vice President Kim Holmes. James was appointed in 2017 to repair the carnage wreaked by Jim DeMint when he was Heritage’s president. While Heritage under DeMint wielded more political influence, the caliber of ideas took a beating.

Assessing how well James did at this job reveals some interesting fissures within the conservative movement after four years of Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal editorial board thanked James and Holmes for “right[ing] the ship when it was foundering.” RealClearPolitics’s Philip Wegmann used the exact same metaphor in characterizing James as having “stepped in to help steady the ship.”

On the other hand, former Heritage staffer and Trump official Andrew Kloster offered less charitable thoughts about the outgoing Heritage leadership. Kloster argued in the America Conservative, “I can think of no time Heritage really made the news during James’s tenure,” and “I know of numerous mid-to-senior-level rock stars who left Heritage at least in part because of the difficulty in fighting for a commander who couldn’t address today’s challenges.”

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This disagreement speaks to deeper problems within the conservative firmament after the Trump era. The Trump White House was very good at tearing things down. As the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has observed repeatedly, however, there was little creation or institutionalization of new ideas. Part of this was due to the vagaries of populism as a political project. Another part was the initial alienation between the Trump administration and the conservative intellectual ecosystem. And part of it was that when there was an attempt to inject new ideas into the public sphere, the execution was god-awful.

The Journal’s editorial board argues, “The best way to show its appreciation is to appoint successors who share their commitment to the ideas and principles that made Heritage great — and helped leave America even greater.” This raises an awkward question, however: What are the ideas and principles that made Heritage great? Is it a defense of tax cuts? Arguments in favor of the British monarchy? Suggesting that statehood for the District of Columbia is unnecessary because … yard signs?

Kloster wants someone who will stand up to “woke capital” and advance the causes of social conservatism. Wegmann suggests that a consensus candidate to helm Heritage would be former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney — but it is difficult to see how a budget-cutter fits Trump’s vision of populist largesse.

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There are ongoing post-Trump efforts to build think tanks embodying his populist ideals, but there are reasons to doubt whether they will take off. Heritage has the advantage of a residual legacy of quality policy chops, built-in infrastructure and decent ties with the Trump wing. That might be enough to cobble together a legitimately interesting conservative storehouse of ideas for the next generation of GOP leaders. So the next Heritage president is an important choice.

The problem is that conservatism is in a state of serious flux right now. The Heritage Foundation of a generation ago was about low taxes, limited government spending, a robust foreign policy and free trade. As of now, three of those four pillars are under ideological challenge from the right.

Wegmann quotes an insider as saying, “The truth is that Heritage has always considered itself, and will always consider itself, a fusionist organization.” It is precisely when a party is out of power that it needs to develop ideas that can attract more than a minority of voters. But in all likelihood, the temptation to “own the libs” will crowd out a sustained effort to create anything new. Either way, the choice of the next president of the Heritage Foundation should be a useful harbinger of what to expect from the GOP for the next few years.