Rats Flee Floating Ship

You might have heard the story break that the Heritage Foundation, America's leading right wing "think tank", has just been hit with a rush of high-level resignations across several key programs. The resignations were precipitated by Heritage's president, Kevin Roberts, legitimizing the rise in antisemitism explicit antisemitism even more explicit antisemitism on the mainstream right by ostentatiously defending Tucker Carlson friendly interview with neo-Nazi extremist Nick Fuentes.

(Among those resigning is Josh Blackman, and I have to say, caring about other Jews makes a nice change of pace for him).

The scope of the resignations has understandably led folks to frame the events as "turmoil" at Heritage, and there's no doubt they're losing a lot of big names who have decided that Heritage's increasingly open embrace of open nativism and ethnic supremacy is too much for them. And the natural thing to conclude in the wake of such turmoil and disarray is that Roberts has made a major strategic error; failing to recognize that even now there are some things that are still "too far" for even the most hardened conservative loyalist.

But l disagree with that take. To the contrary, I think Roberts is right. This was no blunder, this was strategy, and Roberts is absolutely going to be vindicated in the end.

Now, obviously, when I say Roberts is right -- he's not morally right. He's morally abominable; his positions, reprehensible. But that goes without saying; if he was morally upstanding, he wouldn't be leading the Heritage Foundation.

No, what I mean is, Roberts is right in his assessment of where the conservative movement is going and what it wants. No matter how august their titles and pedigrees, the people departing are not going to cripple Heritage; they will not dim its star in the least. Heritage will be able to replenish it ranks just fine (it helps that mediocrity is not a barrier to success there), and its influence in the halls of conservative power will not wane.

Roberts has calculated that open embrace of White nationalism and nativism is the ticket to success in the contemporary conservative movement. I think he is right in that wager. It is the same calculation made by J.D. Vance -- a man whose completely venal lack of principles makes him, if nothing else, a useful barometer of how the right-wing winds are blowing -- when he jumps all in on White supremacist bullhorns. Roberts knows full well what young Republicans truly think, and what they truly think is that they hate Jews, think Hitler is underrated, revel in being called racist, believe women should get back in the kitchen, and think anyone who isn't a "heritage American" has no rights the white man is bound to respect. These people -- the new GOP base -- will not follow their elders in fleeing Heritage. To the contrary, they will be even more excited to join forces with it.

This is the Republican Party's present and future, and Roberts is making a calculated decision to get out in front of it. It's not surprise that one of the staffers rising to fill the power vacuum after all this is E.J. Antoni, he of the creepy love affair for an iconic Nazi battleship. Antoni's Nazi fascination is exactly what Roberts is looking for, because it's exactly what contemporary conservatism is looking for. The people who don't like it? They're yesterday's conservatives. Their departures mean nothing.

So I suspect that the Heritage refugees will find that, their years of slavish service to the conservative cause notwithstanding, they are now functional irrelevancies. They're not going to pull a Bill Kristol and have a late-stage redemption arc. They're not going to have meaningful influence or clout in contemporary conservative circles either, as they no doubt fantasize. They'll be nobodies. Some will rage impotently against the dying of the light, some will quietly choose to fade away. Some number will, if past history is any guide, come sheepishly crawling back into the fold -- the fate of many a "NeverTrumper" whose "principled" opposition was actually pure opportunism that sadly misread the prevailing political winds. None of them will do much of anything to alter or even ameliorate the tsunami of racist, nativist, antisemitic, and misogynist antagonism that is the sole driving force of the modern conservative movement.

So yeah -- don't see this as the Heritage Foundation being torn asunder. This is the Heritage Foundation perceiving the new conservative normal -- a normal of unapologetic authoritarianism, atavistic ethnic hatred, gutter racism, smirking antisemitism, and vicious nativism -- and deciding it wants to be at the vanguard.