Trumpies vs. the Heritage Foundation

[lpetrich]

The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank that was founded in 1973, and in 1988, it proposed an early version of Romneycare and Obamacare - History of the Individual Health Insurance Mandate - Obamacare - ProCon.org

Five Reasons Conservatives Shouldn't Give the Heritage Foundation Another Red Cent - Revolver datelined December 28, 2020, and apparently authored by a follower of Donald Trump.

For the past four years, the Heritage Foundation has happily ridden the coattails of Donald Trump while doing what it can to undermine the most important goals of his presidency. Now, Trump isn’t even out of office and the Foundation is showing how eager it is to return to the failed Paul Ryan brand of GOP politics. Doubtless, Heritage thinks it can raise money from conservatives forever, regardless of what ideology they are actually pushing. Conservatives must pay attention and reject this. If Heritage abandons President Trump’s political realignment, then it doesn’t deserve a single cent of funding. It deserves to be torn down and replaced.

The article's five reasons will be in my next posts.

 

[lpetrich]

Here are those reasons:

1. Heritage is rejecting efforts to remedy catastrophic coronavirus lockdowns.

President Trump just signed a $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package. The package is filled with pork for all kinds of programs, including foreign aid. The one part of the bill that is indisputably worthwhile is a new $600 payment to ordinary Americans to offset the government-imposed dislocation from the pandemic lockdowns. Arguably, the payments should be much higher (and Trump fought for just such an increase). But Heritage takes the opposite view. After tens of million of Americans had their lives totally derailed by hopelessly inept government officials, Heritage wants them to go uncompensated.

“More Stimulus Checks Aren’t the Answer,” Heritage says in a recent article for its website. The article argues that a coronavirus payment isn’t needed because, among other things, Americans’ average credit card debt burden has gone from terrifying to merely enormous ...

By the end of the article, Heritage reveals its own solution for the coronavirus calamity: Vague libertarianism.

I agree with the Trump Admin here.

2. From the beginning, Heritage was undermining President Trump’s agenda on immigration and foreign policy.

Prior to the 2016 election, Heritage harshly attacked Trump’s core immigration platform. Heritage fellow Mike Gonzalez complained to NBC that Trump’s plan to curb legal immigration “ignored the benefits” it gave to America. During Trump’s presidency, Heritage did embrace tough actions against illegal immigration, and promoted necessary reforms like ending birthright citizenship. But at the same time, Heritage fought to prop up America’s endless inflow of legal immigrants.

...
While Heritage’s record on immigration is spotty, its record on foreign wars is suicidal. Throughout all four years of Trump’s presidency, the foundation has demanded the perpetual extension of the endless, useless war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, it also released papers promoting military action against Syria.

I pretty much agree with the Heritage Foundation about immigration, and with the Trumpie about those wars.

 

[lpetrich]

More:

3. Heritage has slavishly defended the growing power of Big Tech at the expense of American workers.

While big tech’s censorship power grew more and more powerful, Heritage (which receives donations from Google) published mindless papers touting “free enterprise” as the solution to powerful monopolies choking off the speech of ordinary Americans. ...

It’s just that simple! Just outcompete Facebook, Google, and Amazon, and free speech and conservatism will flourish. It might even work, if “free-market” conservatives hadn’t allowed a few tech companies to grow so large they rival national governments in how much power they wield. But they did, so no solutions need to be sought. Heritage isn’t interested.

I agree with the Trumpie tere.

But I note that it is a big change from the usual sort of right-wing arguments that I've often run into -- if one dislikes some company, one can refuse to use its products and one can refuse be employed by it. Arguments that the HF used about Big Tech.

4. Heritage embraced the big lie about American racism.

Worst of all, after George Floyd’s death, when America was convulsed with riots and the left launched its most ambitious cultural offensive in decades, Heritage Foundation president Kay C. James was there to egg it on:

Racism in America is a fatal wound. Every time another incident occurs we put a Band-Aid on it, but the Band-Aid keeps falling off. Band-Aids are not enough to ever stitch this country back together. The arrest of fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on Friday on charges of manslaughter and third-degree murder is a welcome step, but it is just a Band-Aid.

Then saying what an evil monster George Floyd was and what a saint Kyle Rittenhouse is.

I agree with the Heritage Foundation here.