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What’s the matter with Project 2025?

I don't know whether to laugh at this piece from Politico or to be disgusted or something else:

Whenever Vice President Kamala Harris mentions Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s now-toxic blueprint for the next Republican administration — blood starts throbbing in the temples of certain conservative Heritage veterans.... “I cannot think of a study that has done more damage,” said Ken Weinstein, a one-time former President Donald Trump appointee and former head of the conservative Hudson Institute. “It’s the exact opposite of the Harris approach of don’t say anything about what you’re doing.”

The case for laughing at this is pretty obvious. Nuff said.

The case for disgust is the fact that conservatives are upset that Heritage actually said what they believe in public. And make no mistake: the case against Project 2025 is all about tone, not policy substance. Conservatives are all on board with its policy recommendations.

Then there's the case for pity. Project 2025 is just the latest edition of Heritage's Mandate for Leadership series, published in election years ever since Reagan was president. Nobody ever complained before, so why now?

The Politico piece suggests the problem is all about style:

The bitterness these days focuses on a new house style that allegedly enabled the current embarrassment: an elevation of marketing over research; a chest-thumping tendency to assert dominance within the Trump-era right; an inability to distinguish partisan agitation from policy advocacy because “engagement on X, positive feedback from Slack channels or mentions in their news feeds” have become paramount, in the words of one conservative activist who watched Project 2025 take shape.

Sure, whatever. But it's not as if Heritage has ever been a watchword for rigorous, honest research in the first place. And the entire conservative movement has become Trumpist, so you can hardly blame Heritage for following along.

Maybe Heritage could have worded things less belligerently. But for the most part the policy recommendations are garden variety modern conservatism. They just aren't hedged for a popular audience, which is typical of these things.

In the end, then, put me down for disgust. Conservatives are mostly mad simply because their true beliefs have been set down in black and white—and the Harris campaign has decided to highlight them. Boo hoo.

47 thoughts on “What’s the matter with Project 2025?

  1. erick

    Bingo,

    Republican policy proposals are so unpopular that when they read them to focus groups people don’t believe them, they can’t believe anyone would actual propose something so absurdly bad. The party leaders used to know this and couched everything in gobbledegook.

        1. emjayay

          I'm sure they put off the book about it written by a top Heritage guy with an introduction by JD until after the election instead of this month for purely technical reasons.

        2. Joseph Harbin

          And for anyone interested in knowing where JD Vance would like to take the country, this Politico article has good background. Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel are the names to know.

          On the surface, Deneen, Yarvin and Thiel want different things — a postliberal order grounded in Catholic social teaching; a monarchy styled after a tech startup; a stateless techno-libertarian paradise in which the only rights are property rights. But they are united both by their opposition to liberal democracy and by their fundamental elitism — their shared belief that America is and always will be run by elites, but that it is currently ruled by the wrong type of elite. Their goal is not to abolish elite rule but to replace America’s current elite with a purportedly different, more conservative one, and they share a blueprint for doing so. Implicitly recognizing that their ideas are not popular enough to win broad-based political support, they advocate for an alliance between reactionary elites and the alienated masses, channeling popular frustration against the democratic order they hope to eventually replace.

          Vance (fortunately) is a thoroughly incompetent politician and unlikely ever to get to the White House on his own merits. Assuming the GOP loses, the post-Trump battle for power within the Republican Party will be something. The "respectable" wing prevailed through the Romney run in 2012, but they don't exist anymore. The MAGA nuts have taken over and sidelining them cannot be done in just a cycle or two. No one has Trump's talent for getting away with so much crap and getting this far. But there'll be others who'll want to try.

          1. cld

            A rising social conservative movement with a catchy new twist seeking to replace an ancien regime of established social conservatives is the standard formula of revolutions.

            Progressives and liberals work to reform existing institutions to adapt them to new circumstances that better serve the needs of society, while social conservatives invariably want to burn it all in a chiliastic fire to satisfy their need to create as much harm as possible.

            1. Joseph Harbin

              I used to think a few election losses could lead the R party to reform its ways. Reform was the plan after the post-2012 postmortem, but Trump arrived and the party followed. Now, the odds of reform look bleak, even after Trump is gone*, and the party will be increasingly more dangerous. Having no center-right party leaves a void, and media needs to stop pretending there is one where none exists.

              * What happens with him in 2028 is TBD.

              1. mudwall jackson

                if this campaign is any indication, dozing donnie will be residing in a memory care unit of an assisted living facility by 2028. assuming he's still alive.

        3. erick

          My kind of conspiracy theory is the deal is Trump wins the election, resigns for health reasons and JD pardons him,

          The one thing that gives me pause is even Trump is smart enough to know that JD and his handlers could reneg on the deal, unless he has plenty of dirt on them.

          1. Josef

            I don't think there's a downside to this deal for Vance. He'd probably be relieved to not have to play 2nd fiddle to Trumps kazoo.

          2. Joseph Harbin

            I see that as a possibility except for Trump resigning. He would never cede power but the powers behind JD know there are ways to get him out of the way.

          3. KenSchulz

            Vance can’t pardon Trump for the state charges. Then again, I don’t know why the rationale the Supreme Court majority pulled out of their asses in the immunity case wouldn’t allow them to void state charges as well. Does TFG have a deal with them? Does he need one? They seem to be eager for a monarchy already.

      1. akapneogy

        We are familiar with the concepts of the real plan - graft and self aggrandizement. That is what the half-dozen odd legal cases against Trump are all about.

      2. Josef

        It's probably not even a concept of a concept. It's outrageous he's still repeating this lie about the A.C.A. He never had, nor will he ever have a replacement plan, cheaper and better or otherwise.

  2. cld

    It's all about protecting the cats, because they're afraid they might have lost the cats, so they're sending in the border patrol. Because of zombies and voodoo, and the ducks and the geese, which only the strange and foreign would just kill for a free meal.

    In a few days they'll be handing out AR-15s to whoever needs them to protect the cats, and their dog friends, from the savage hordes that would rather eat an innocent, helpless pet than work at McDonalds, and the trans people who want to use their bathrooms; and the furries who are begging them to kill them.

    They are prepared to take this all the way and lock themselves in the bathroom while shouting through the door and threatening to shoot if everyone doesn't go away.

    It's the last line of defense for America.

    1. Martin Stett

      A sidebar, but this is often a cat blog.
      One of Trump's rage lines about wind turbines is that they kill birds.
      In fact every birder knows that the real killers of birds are cats, domesticated and feral.
      Maybe bird-lover Trump will place a bounty on cats.

        1. Josef

          I think it is. Specifically skyscrapers. But cats are up there too. Far worse than windmills. That's if I remember things correctly.

          1. cld

            But they're the kind of birds that have adapted to human environments and thrived and so their numbers are dramatically increased.

            The pussycat is nature's way of restoring balance.

          2. Five Parrots in a Shoe

            According to the US Fish & Wildlife Service these are the biggest killers of birds:

            Cats - 2.4Bn birds per year (yes, billions);
            Collisions, glass buildings - 600M birds per year;
            Collisions, vehicles - 200M birds per year;
            Collisions, power lines - 25M birds per year
            Electrocutions, power lines - 5.6M birds per year;
            Collisions, wind turbines - 240k birds per year (yes, thousands)

  3. tomtom502

    Project 2025 is sticking to Trump because the Democrats keep repeating it is the blueprint.

    In the past the press would say Trump himself has disavowed it, it is a think tank document, etc. and the Democrats would accept they don't have courtroom-level proof and drop it.

    So far Harris and her campaign don't so this, they keep asserting Project 2025 is the blueprint, and that is cloase enough to the truth that the press is reduced to bothsidesing. Point to Harris.

    In the debate Harris called various state laws "Trump abortion bans". It will stick so long as Harris and other Democrats keep using the phrase.

    This is a big change. Remember Obama's "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it"? It was Politifact's lie of the year! Like it or not standards of expected discourse have declined, and Harris has the wit to move with the times. Republicans are getting a taste of their own medicine.

    1. Altoid

      Yes, absolutely, and it's a refreshing change to see a leading Dem exploit the power of repetition, and naming and shaming. Harris and her people understand that what the *media* now thinks its job is, is *not* to do more than cursory stabs at keeping the players honest; as far as media folks understand it, it's to repeat what the players say. So the players have to give them the script. About damn time.

  4. Josef

    Aww, their horrible policy proposals are out in the light of day instead of being hidden in the shadows. How unfortunate... for them.

  5. Martin Stett

    Trump has no plan other than Big-I-Am.
    It's the minions who'll do all the work for him, while he watches tapes of his rallies, who'll enact P2025.

  6. QuakerInBasement

    One of the aspects of Project 2025 I have seen mentioned often is its recommendation to designate broad swathes of federal employees as "policy related" positions, stripping them of civil service employment protections. This would allow a new administration much greater leeway to remove career emplyees from federal agencies and replace them with partisans.

    I won't go into the reasons why this is a threat.

    Was this something Heritage has explored before? Have these recommendations ever been put into practice?

    1. Art Eclectic

      My guess is that this conservative "wish list" is electoral suicide, which is why most of it has never seen light of day.

    2. cephalopod

      Trump tried it the first time he was in office.

      He signed an executive order to implement "Schedule F," which would have reclassified thousands of career employees. That would have made it possible to fire them all and replace them with political appointees.

  7. cephalopod

    Trump is the first Republican president to be at such odds with major figures in his own party and so disinterested in actual governance that his actual administration would have to come from an outside source.

    His last term was all about dysfunction and lack of preparation, and Heritage is really the only place any semblance of order can be found.

    So, yes, conservatives have long wanted to do many of these things (and even worse), but a would-be incoming administration could plausibly pretend that they would actually do something different.

    With Trump there has to be a puppet master, and Heritage is the most likely candidate.

  8. ColBatGuano

    Heritage forgot to put Project 2025 through the NY Times translator to smooth off those rough edges for public consumption.

    1. KawSunflower

      Most likely because Stephen Miller has too.muvh input, along with that of over 100 veterans of trump's administration,, I've read. It doesn't seem to be written by only. or long-term, Heritage Foundation people.

  9. Josef

    Mandate for Leadership, The Conservative Promise. This made me laugh out loud. The Conservative ability to wrap something horrible up in something that sounds benign is unparalleled.

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