Heritage Foundation Mocks ‘Socialist’ Critics of Project 2025s Authoritarian Mandate For Leadership
The Heritage Foundation, the country’s most powerful right wing think-tank, has come under intense scrutiny by journalists and progressive activists over Project 2025 -- also known as the Presidential Transition Project – and its 900-+ page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, an authoritarian blueprint for seizing. and maintaining, hard line conservative political power for decades to come.
Project 2025s agenda, (https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImI7FjKX-hQMVNDKtBh2RAAk0EAAYASAAEgIkZ_D_BwE), backed by more than 100 right-wing organizations, is detailed in Mandate for Leadership, a version of which Heritage has written as transition plans for each prospective Republican president since 1981.
This year’s version of Mandate for Leadership is its most complete and toxic ever as it puts democratic institutions and democratic ideals on the chopping block by threatening civil and human rights, eliminating reproductive rights, infusing the government with Christian values, denying climate change, rounding up and deporting undocumented people, taking over the Justice Department, intimidating journalists.
The Project’s goal? Unadulterated, unchallengeable political power for decades to come.
While Heritage’s master plan has come under more intense scrutiny lately, with critics reporting on its draconian agenda, most Americans are unaware of its ramifications.
Recently, an uber-confident Heritage Foundation responded to its critics by issuing a 13-page pamphlet restating its goals and mocking its socialist woke critics.
Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery reported (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/heritage-foundations-snarky-and-revealing-defense-of-project-2025/)
that Heritage’s electronic pamphlet is titled “5 Reasons Leftists HATE Project 2025” (https://www9.heritage.org/rs/824-MHT-304/images/5%20Reasons%20Leftists%20Hate%20Project%202025%20eBook%20THF.pdf?version=0&mkt_tok=ODI0LU1IVC0zMDQAAAGSZw7lk_b8BfbU2MsSd3SBBOJWkKktvCnmh2M7MBbeTZVeJaXF4KBl767HmgatUDUviHvtxKLAPy6pYGfMuml14H-z90LgDd8e2ZWiV5PEYDYGwEmPiw).
In it, Heritage declares: “Radical leftists are terrified … and they should be.”
The 5 reasons leftists hate Project 2025:
1. Project 2025 will restore the American family: “The radical left hates families, because when people have strong families, they don’t worship big government and succumb to leftist ideologies like gender ideology. …
2. Project 2025 will dismantle the deep state: The radical Left needs the deep state to maintain its iron grip on power. In the deep state, unelected leftist bureaucrats enact destructive, left-wing policies—independent of the legislative process. …
3. Project 2025 will end America’s border crisis: It’s no secret that the radical Left loves open borders. …
4. Project 2025 will reject climate hysteria: “Leftist elites constantly panic about the ‘climate crisis.’ But to them, it is just a power play. …
5. Project 2025 will stop socialism in its tracks: “Leftists today are driven by the same rotten socialist ideas that nearly destroyed much of the world during the 20th century. …
The pamphlet explains further: “Ultimately, the radical Left despises Project 2025 because it will save America from becoming a socialist nightmare. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 will train thousands of patriotic Americans to serve in the next presidential administration and enact the conservative policy reforms that will save our country.
“We know what we are fighting for: our Republic, our freedom, and each other. The next conservative president will enter office with a simple choice: greatness or failure. It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every generation of Americans has faced and passed. Project 2025 will ensure the next president has the tools needed to succeed at this daunting task.
“For over 50 years, Heritage has been fighting for America. Project 2025 is bigger than any particular candidate or election. It’s the most comprehensive effort made by the conservative movement to save our republic, and it will work. THAT is why leftists hate this plan.”
As Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery observed, Heritage’s “5 Reasons Leftists HATE Project 2025” “is less of a substantive engagement with Project 2025 critics and more of a Trumpish exercise in name-calling and inflammatory MAGA-movement rhetoric meant to demonize opponents.”
According to People for the American Way’s Svante Myrick, “political opponents … would be in the crosshairs of a weaponized Department of Justice because the plan’s call for total presidential control of executive departments would end 50 years of an independent Department of Justice” (https://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/the-maga-enemies-list-is-growing-and-so-are-the-odds-that-youre-on-it/).
Myrick noted that nonpartisan civil servants – perhaps as many as 50,000 -- who make our government tick “would be slated for firing and replacement by people chosen for their loyalty to Trump.”
Will increased scrutiny of Project 2025s mandate for autocracy resonate with voters? That is the question.