Heritage flim-flam
by digby
I wrote a piece for Salon today about the hilarious idea in the beltway that the Heritage Foundation is really leading a moderate “reform” movement in the GOP:
First, let’s dispense with the ludicrous idea that Paul Ryan represents the “intellectual wing” of the Republican Party. He represents the flim-flam wing of the Republican Party, which is admittedly a very large faction, but it can hardly be defined as “intellectual.” Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are actual intellectuals. (And at this point they are practically the only ones.) But it doesn’t take an intellectual to see that policies benefiting the non-college-educated, blue-collar, “Sam’s Club” voter would be useful to a party that must win the vast majority of white votes in order to even have a dim chance at obtaining the presidency. This is the stuff of Fox News analysis, not intellectual inquiry. Obviously, Marco Rubio is no intellectual and Mike Lee is a policy entrepreneur in the sense that he is an extremely conservative civil liberties advocate, which has just enough currency in the GOP to attract four young nerds and a few of Ron Paul’s old fishing buddies.
The article also points out that Heritage Action has recently been ostracized in Washington for taking on the political establishment. They were even barred from attending the meetings of the Republican Study group, which is the D.C. Republican equivalent of being shunned by the Mean Girls table in the cafeteria — a kind of social death. The article characterizes this as an ideological battle between the center and the right, but it’s really a little family spat among conservatives. There is no center. And the idea that they’ve suddenly noticed that voters expect a policy agenda “even though Heritage Action’s favored prescriptions are more conservative than what many party officials support” is basically saying that the 2016 presidential candidates need something to run on besides hating Barack Obama. Heritage is hoping to get a little piece of that action.
But you have to give them credit for sheer audacity. The party that elevates the health of business above every other concern, that worships “market solutions” to every problem, that calls the nearly 50 percent of Americans who make too little money to owe federal income taxes “moochers” and “parasites” is now saying, “What a lot of Americans are looking for is a genuine agenda that speaks to the anxieties they have, and that’s a tough thing for Washington to deliver because it’s not what K Street’s asking for.”
That’s the party that initiated a program called “The K-Street Project”:
The K Street Project is an effort by the Republican Party (GOP) to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials, an arrangement known as crony capitalism. It was launched in 1995 by Republican strategist Grover Norquist and then-House majority whip Tom DeLay. It has been criticized as being part of a “coziness” between the GOP and large corporations which has allegedly allowed business to rewrite government regulations affecting their own industries in some cases.
How likely is it that this “cozy” relationship is no longer desirable by the Republican Party?
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a “rebranding” going on at the Heritage Foundation. Under the mature and reasonable leadership of Jim DeMint, the Christian right ex-senator who said Obamacare would be the president’s “Waterloo,” the foundation is undergoing a bit of a face-lift. They are touting the sexy new Beltway brand called the “Reform Conservative Movement” (which strikes me as something of an oxymoron. Why would conservatism want reform?). DeMint characterizes this revolutionary change as showing Americans “how our ideas and policies will make their life better and country stronger,” which does seem like a challenge.
Read on … This has to be the most absurd “re-brand” in history. And yet some members of the beltway press are eating it up.
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