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Friday, July 05, 2024

institutionalizing Trumpism.” The pigs on Animal Farm at one point started walking on two legs. In a sense, coming out as who they really were.

 Walking on two legs, the fiction, while the fact, per DailyBeast:

Man Behind Project 2025 Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts gave what appeared to be a disturbing warning to the left.

That man, behind the Heritage hard turn far right after long posing as a "Think Tank" but now dropping the pose and coming out full shark mode, blood in the water, no think about it. (Sorry mixing metaphors, pigs, sharks, land and sea, but cut me some slack.) 

Full pig mode, let's say it that way. ("Pigs With a Blood Lust," as a possible New Heritage slogan.}

And that man, getting Daily Beast attention for the beast he is, Kevin Roberts, has a revealing Wikipedia page

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Clear and present dangers sometimes require following links, when convenient quotes are purposely being withheld. Two links already given. Do a search. Enjoy.

Last, Crabgrass - as a blind guess - suggests Kevin Roberts is close to Leonard Leo; house guests of one another, frequenting the same bar; sharing the same confessorship, etc. No link for that, but, go figure. And don't blame Francis. He does what he can with what he's got. The pair are nominally Rome's, but move as independent allies of whatever forces, dark or darker. Having Bannon, John Roberts, on the rolodex. Maybe past/present social guests of the Mercers. It's speculation.

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Clearing detritus. This Kevin Roberts is a different person. Comparing Wiki sidebar birthdates showed it. Both rooted in Texas recently, both middle initial D. but two separate bald headed white guys.

Back in 2021 when Roberts took over leadership of the Heritage adventure, Real Clear Politics wrote of Roberts' selection:

Barb Van Andel-Gaby, chairman of foundation’s board of trustees, succinctly described the new president as a “DC Outsider.” [...]

After RealClearPolitics broke the story earlier this year that Kay Coles James would be stepping down as president, the conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal observed that “[w]hoever replaces her will say a good deal about the future of the political right.” In his first interview since accepting the position, Roberts told RCP that his selection means that the conservatism of the next decade and the next century will “not only be less DC-centric, it will be one that gets back to its roots of being hostile, hostile, hostile to the centralization of power in the national capitol.”

Not merely hostile, but multiply so. Continuing, RCP text:

Talk of renewal punctuated by references to civic virtue helped the self-described “recovering academic” win over foundation trustees. Competition was stiff, and speculation over who would take the helm of Heritage became a favored parlor game in conservative circles. A headhunter helped compile a list of more than 100 names. The board then narrowed it down to about half-a-dozen finalists before interviewing candidates in person.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was interested but didn’t make the final cut. A former secretary of labor, Eugene Scalia, was also considered. Other Trump alumni such as Russ Vought, previously the director of the Office of Management and Budget and currently the head of Center for Renewing America, had already moved on to other pursuits before the search began. That the board would look to Trump World for recruits is not surprising. “We were Ronald Reagan's favorite think tank,” Ed Feulner, the founding president of Heritage, privately told foundation staff four years ago. “And today we are, and will continue to be, Donald Trump's favorite think tank.”

Got that? DonaldTrump's favorite. Pay attention.

Even Trump’s vice president was floated as a potential pick for a time. “Mike Pence was actively being courted for a position in December,” a source directly involved in the talks told RCP. Pence ultimately took a post at the organization as a distinguished visiting fellow. In any event, the guesswork is now over. Foundation employees will soon meet Roberts for the first time as president. Heritage prides itself on defining “the truth north” for the right, and Roberts was quick to reorient the organization as an ideas shop.

“A think tank occupies the space between policy making and politics and, on the other side, the academy writ-large,” he told RCP. “In other words, a think tank at its best — and Heritage has set the standard for 48 years — is one where you have academic quality research.”

Yet, critics who have complained in recent years that the organization had become too political and less cerebral may be disappointed. “A think tank, at its best, doesn’t merely leave its thinking on paper,” Roberts said. Heritage sought an answer to that problem by ratcheting up pressure on lawmakers during the Obama years, angering establishment Republicans in the process. A political arm of the foundation, Heritage Action for America, was founded in 2010.  Its paradigm wasn’t strictly scholarly: “If you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” Does the new foundation president see Heritage as an ideas factory or a lobbying shop then? Both. “It is an institution of civil society, and as such, I wouldn't ever think about splitting that baby,” Roberts said.

“We have got a real opportunity in the near term, not just for the 2022 and 2024 election cycles, but for the next decade,” Roberts said of the organization’s political and policy goals “to help define what institutions who are center right do — not just what they say and not just who they hire, but what they do and how they act.”

The intellectual orbit on the right has expanded since the 1980s when the Reagan administration borrowed heavily from the foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership.” A constellation of new groups, many of them founded by Heritage alumni, have exploded on the scene. [...]

Heritage will have its work cut out. Donald Trump tore the ideological curtain, and a number of factions have rushed in to introduce new, competing orthodoxies. While Roberts sees some innovations in the populist moment to be embraced, like skepticism of “an overly proactive foreign policy,” he also warned of the “excesses of populism," a temperament defined by an “inclination for really quick solutions.”

[...] Roberts will have plenty of policy to wrestle with soon enough. But the academic returns to one issue in particular — and not surprisingly given that he founded his own K-12 school in Louisiana (John Paul the Great Academy) before going on to lead a university, Wyoming Catholic College. “People expect me as an educator to always start with education,” he said when asked about the most pertinent political debate on the horizon, “but I actually happen to believe that's true.”

 And the headline quote, that is Roberts speaking, per the opening cite. So ---

Now, 7/5/24, what's next? Well, TheHill:

Former President Trump sought to distance himself from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 on Friday, saying he has “nothing to do” with the initiative and disagrees with some of its aspects.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he is not involved in the right-wing think tank’s proposal, which outlines various policies and initiatives that some conservatives hope a future Republican administration would administer.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” he said. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.” 

The 900-page 2025 Presidential Transition Project is a “governing agenda” filled with conservative priorities and insight from scholars and policy experts. It is divided into sections based on five main topics — “Taking the Reins of Government,” “The Common Defense,” “The General Welfare,” “The Economy” and “Independent Regulatory Agencies.” 

The project makes a wide range of policy proposals, perhaps most notably reshaping the powers of the executive branch. It also calls for striking various small government agencies and rolling back funding for abortions and approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. 

Another proposal is reimplementing Schedule F, a classification for federal workers that makes it easier to fire them and replace them with loyalists. The Associated Press has estimated this could affect 50,000 workers.

We can call it a communications gap. Or simply say one or the other is lying.

RollingStone, July 3, 

The Heritage Foundation is the once-staid think tank that, since Roberts’ arrival in 2021, has leaned into the culture wars with gusto. The group has organized the infamous Project 2025, mapping out an extremist agenda for a prospective second Trump term.

Roberts spoke Tuesday on the show Real America’s Voice with guest host and former Tea Party congressman Dave Brat, and uncorked comments that made him sound like a member of the Oath Keepers militia.

“Let me speak about the radical left,” Roberts said, insisting it “has taken over our institutions.” He said that the reason progressive are “apoplectic right now” — in the wake of the Supreme Court decision granting the president immunity from criminal prosecution — “is because our side is winning.”

Roberts then declared himself an insurrectionist who is open to violence: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts comments underscore the threat of authoritarianism that is looming over the 2024 election, and immediately caught the attention of experts on fascist movements. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at NYU, called out Roberts in a pair of posts on X, describing him as a “fascist” who was “celebrating” the newfound power of the president to “kill people and pay no penalty” while “feeling empowered by the ruling to threaten the American people.” Ben-Ghiat decoded “the left” as applying to “everyone who is not MAGA.”

The NYU professor, whose expertise is in Italian fascism, added that “Heritage does not have an in-house paramilitary” and that by “using ‘we,’ Roberts is suggesting that Heritage is aligned with armed entities that could be activated if there is resistance to their coup.” She called this a “classic intimidation tactic: submit or else.”

The Biden campaign denounced Roberts comments in a statement: “248 years ago tomorrow America declared independence from a tyrannical king, and now Donald Trump and his allies want to make him on [sic, one] at our expense.” The statement described Roberts as “dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”

Later in the broadcast, Roberts predicted that his “second revolution” would be complete by 2050, and that would it would coincide with a new “great awakening” that would bring America to God — underscoring the extent to which Heritage and its Project 2025 is entwined with Christian nationalism.

Which has Trump saying, "Not me." But Trump poses as many things, depending on which audience he faces. But as a bottom line, if Trump says Project 2025 is full of it, then believe, it is. Nonetheless, were Trump to win, what then, being who he is?

Wholly unrelated, Scorpions are invading Texas, (not coming from there invading elsewhere.) Whatever. And, yes. Saying no quotes, and then quoting. Maybe lying is infectious. Put a MAGA hat on my head and who knows what I'd write? No. One of those things on my head would make my hair cringe.

FURTHER: Link. Whether Trump and Project 2025 are cojoined, or not, both are deplorable (Oops, the Hillary word, oh dear. Apologies.)

It is fair to note that Trump has never (not yet?) released a video of him holding up a copy of Project 2025 (900 pages) and touting it as a thing he promotes, endorses and urges you to buy; unlike here and here.