Project 2025: The Heritage Foundation’s Plan To Embrace Bigger Government During Trump’s Second Term
After casting my first vote for Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election, I was shell-shocked after Ronald Reagan was swept into office. Then something odd happened. I was buoyed by Reagan’s optimism, became convinced about the evils of communism and came to realize the free-market economy—rather than expanded federal power—offers the best hope for the downtrodden (and everyone). The Gipper convinced me.
He had some help from former Buffalo Bills quarterback and then-U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp (R–N.Y.), who was an architect of Reagan’s tax cuts. I was influenced by one of his articles making the humanitarian case for a market agenda. “Kemp symbolizes for many the hope for a more decent and humane conservatism—a conservatism that leaves nobody out and nobody behind,” wrote David Frum in a 2015 tribute to him.
It’s no surprise that Frum, former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R–Wis.), and those of us who admire the late congressman recoil at the GOP’s recent dark and conspiratorial turn. I can’t find that old Kemp article, but it was brimming with hope for the future, filled with realistic policy prescriptions to lift people out of poverty and exuded authenticity and graciousness.
It’s such a stark contrast to what we hear today: unhinged attacks on political opponents, visions of American carnage, threats of retribution, talk of immigrants as invaders and other cruel and divisive claptrap. America faced even more intractable problems then, so it’s hard to understand where this new outlook comes from.
I read Kemp in Policy Review, then the flagship publication of the conservative Heritage Foundation, which was a leading light in the Reagan revolution. These days, the foundation generally is an advocate for the latest GOP approach—even though many of the current GOP’s populist ideas stand in stark contrast to the economic and foreign affairs positions advocated by Republicans in the 1980s.
The group has spearheaded (along with some former Trump appointees) a new document, Project 2025, that provides a transition policy roadmap should Trump regain the White House. Much of it is disturbing, but it’s refreshing to see actual policy prescriptions spelled out. Since 2016, the party’s basic platform is to follow whatever Trump says—and no serious person would argue Trump is any kind of policy wonk.
Liberals are freaking out. U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D–Calif.), calls Project 2025 an “unprecedented embrace of extremism, fascism, and religious nationalism, orchestrated by the radical right and its dark money backers.” In reality, its 900-plus pages offer a mix of traditional policy platforms with MAGA-oriented ideas. It often conforms to the new conservative approach of wielding government on behalf of conservative causes, as opposed to Reagan’s laudable goal of limiting government power.
For instance, the document explains, “The great challenge confronting a conservative president is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power curre
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