Partisanship Over Policy at the Heritage Foundation

Interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees reveal how the think tank sidelines its scholars to score political points.

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In the weeks after Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border on February 24, Luke Coffey was busy crafting the Heritage Foundation’s proposed policy responses. As the think tank’s lead policy analyst on Ukraine, he saw the House’s $40 billion supplemental aid package to the country later that spring as the practical culmination of his research. 

“Let’s not blow it,” Coffey, then-director of the Heritage Foundation’s Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy, tweeted on May 10. 

Coffey claims that within a day, Heritage senior leadership ordered him to delete the post. Heritage Action, the think tank’s 501(c)4 sister organization, had taken a different view. Executive Director Jessica Anderson implored House Republicans to sink the legislation, writing: “This proposed Ukraine aid package takes money away from the priorities of the American people and recklessly sends our taxpayer dollars to a foreign nation without any accountability.” The bill passed—albeit over the opposition of 57 Republicans in the House and 11 in the Senate.  

“I was not looped into the decision to put out that press release,” Coffey said in an interview. He ended his decade-long tenure at Heritage about a month after the statement’s circulation. Other former staffers say they saw trouble long before Heritage Action came out against the bill.

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  1. Vlad M.

    Disheartening but not surprising. I, too, have a noticed a very sharp tonal shift in Heritage's coverage.

  2. Ben Connelly

    “ Heritage swiftly rose to prominence in the early 1980s after its founders published its Mandate for Leadership, what became an 1,100-page policy manuscript to assist Republican President Ronald Reagan’s White House. The playbook included 2,000 policy proposals dedicated to advancing Heritage’s four main policy objectives: “free competitive enterprise, limited government, individual liberty and a strong national defense.””

    I just read that part in Matt Continetti’s book!

    Great article. One typo:

    “ Some tension has emerged between establishment conservatives and the national conservatives on Capitol Hill, though national conservatives are from the dominant force in the GOP today.”

    I think you’re missing the word “far.”

    1. Charlotte Lawson

      Good catch!

  3. Octávio Lima

    This is so sad to read. James Carafano being a part of this is also very hard to digest. Heritage used to be so good. During the Obamacare debates they produced great content. When they decided to create Heritage Action I thought it was a mistake, and now it seems Action directs the main, not the other way around. Action could be used to propagate the Heritage message, but that does not seem to be the case, as Carafano's statements show, Heritage will follow the populace, not help the populace understand better the issues and conservative solutions.

  4. Jeff Greene

    So very disappointing. Back when I more regularly wrote and spoke on policy issues for my bosses (elected conservative Republicans), Heritage Foundation was almost always where I would start in my research, to find good, substantive arguments and evidence for our side. It is very sad to see it transformed into a steaming pile of Trumpism instead of principled conservatism, and abandoning the "Think" part of "think tank".

  5. NashLives

    Good piece. I'm waiting to see what the 2023 index of military strength looks like, past iterations didn't exactly advocate for fiscal restraint with regard to defense spending (quite the opposite!). A major shift there would represent a total conversion of their defense policy shop. In particular I'd keep your eyes on D. Wood, who I'm fairly certain doesn't hold the company position on that topic, and has edited the index for several years in the past.

    1. NashLives

      (that topic being ukraine)

  6. Chanterelle

    It sound like the Heritage Action arm took over. A tail wagging the dog. That is really too bad because appealing only to partisanship will make the policies much worse, as well as not get them the policy wins. So it devolves to a campaign & propaganda association. To be fair I probably didn't agree with a lot that came out of Heritage, but I was willing to consider well made points, and could agree with some things. This is sad. But a movement that prides itself on being anti-intellectual was always going to reject think tanks. Right?

  7. Mathew A

    It sounds like Heritage has had a long term policy on one view. It's also funny how when they take positions that you don't like suddenly it's partisanship instead of just a view you don't like. That's a bit of a pejorative view of things.

    Also, whoever the donors are of course donors views will effect the output. People tend to stop donating really quick if the result changes their world view too much (a little is usually ok)

    1. Peter S.

      "Another former employee said staffers were also told to avoid referring to incoming President Joe Biden as the “president-elect” until electoral votes were certified on January 6, 2021, to avoid lending implicit legitimacy to the 2020 election."

      That's not a serious policy position. It is pure political pandering.

      1. Mathew A

        yeah, I did think that was a bit much

  8. Robert Knudson

    Depressing reporting, but necessary. And I don't believe this is catastrophic; it isn't the Library of Alexandria catching fire. That being said I read this along with Marvin Olasky's account of the changes at World Magazine and am reminded of a hard truth.
    In an environment where the supply of information is essentially limitless, most people base their trust in sources of information on whether these sources conform to their own worldviews, rather than on whether the sources attempt to accurately present a version of the world as we commonly experience it, even if it fails to match their ideological priors.
    Its hard not to fall into this mindset; it sucks when you encounter things that challenge your worldview. You are on the defensive; thinking, engaging with reality, and possibly changing as a result.
    It is much simpler to stay on the offensive, never admitting wrong, and maintain the comfortable smugness that comes with shaping "the Discourse" rather than engaging reality.
    Simplicity claims another one, I suppose.

  9. Seth B

    Excellent reporting, Audrey and Charlotte.
    I hope this piece finds an audience well beyond Dispatch subscribers.

  10. Jeff Walden

    Thanks for writing the piece I knew I wanted - putting flesh on the bones of my prior conclusion that Heritage was more partisan hack than principled org (dating back at lest to their cynically proposing an individual mandate to portray Hillarycare as extreme, either ignoring or never considering its unconstitutional it). It's been obvious for awhile that they act out of partisan rooting interest. Maybe now that the problem is clear, people will start doing something about it.

  11. Jordan

    With all the changes in the definition of republican, I stopped referring to myself as a republican (and registered as an independent). I started saying I was a conservative. But now conservatism is means what exactly?

    1. JR

      Depends on the audience.

  12. Pat Riot

    It's worth noting that Heritage has *long* been the scummiest, dirtiest, most dishonest of the major Republican think tanks, taking the lead on Republican voter suppression, which is a hardball tactic to give your party an incremental advantage in elections. They created the absolute stupidest infographic ever--which they still proliferate to this day--that is only persuasive to people who can't handle math and underscores the dishonesty of this organization:

    https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud

    See, if you suspend your disbelief and fail to divide all of those numbers by the approximately one billion ballots cast in the last 25 years, and gee wow this looks... impressive!

    While Americans were reeling over what happened after the 2020 election--including a lot of Republicans--Heritage only saw an *opportunity* to exploit Trump's lies in order to get their data-driven voter suppression legislation passed. In other words, while most thinking people saw an existential threat our democracy in Trump's lies, Heritage treated it as some good fortune and through their actions *accelerated* the lies by introducing their bills all over the country with the lies as the justification.

    Hence it's not surprising that Heritage backs Putin and Russia over Ukraine: Russia helped Trump win in 2016 and helped the GOP broadly with donations to the NRA. What else is there to know? Putin good, and Putin wants Ukraine, so let him have it. End of story.

    I mean, sure, there's the utterly *suicidal* short-sightedness of doing the bidding of our enemy armed with 3000 nuclear warheads for an incremental advantage in coming elections, but they aren't paid to think about that, right?

    The Republican party and its operatives used to be stacked full of American *patriots* and I voted for them accordingly. Heritage is now an example of what the GOP has become.

    1. Chanterelle

      I thought that is what a think tank was paid to do, think about implications & consequences as well.

  13. Andy Napoli

    When I worked on the House side from 1995-2005, I always admired the Heritage Foundation's work, and looked up to their scholars and policy experts. I didn't always agree with it, but I admired the fact that they wrote papers that were intended to be relevant and used by Capitol Hill lawmakers and staff. Man, how times change. What they are today is just pathetic.

    1. Andy Napoli

      I will say that I know some of their national security/defense folks and they're generally good. Fred Bartels is especially good and I enjoy working with him. I don't know former General LTG (Ret) Thomas Spoehr particularly well, but I remember him from when he served at the Pentagon and I know him well enough to know that he's a serious person. And I've met Jay Carafano a couple of times at conferences and I generally regard him as serious.

      But the incentive structures that these folks work within, is just awful. They are under enormous pressure to produce content that is just rank partisanship.

  14. Michael C

    I fear that even National Review is much the same way now...

    1. Jeff Walden

      I don't think NR is following this path, exactly. I think what they're doing (with numerous notable exceptions! very unlike Heritage and its "one voice") is more taking a sometimes assiduously disinterested approach to Trump and his ideology (or what passes for one, or what people aspire to reverse-engineer out of it). Being more descriptive than assertive.

      It's not the same failure mode. It does allow people to comfortably think more highly of Trump etc. than they otherwise would. But even so, NR will regularly criticize him - it's just more dispassionate than it would be if the target were visibly on "the other side"of their reflexive rooting interest.

  15. MikeS

    First off, I trust The Dispatch will not be quoting Heritage Foundation analysts in its reporting.

    This is just a part of "Conservatism's" long decline from an intellectually-based movement to GOP partisanship of the very lowest order.

    Whatever else conservatives might think of academe, at least they don't have a corrosive "one-voice policy," which is practically designed to stifle thinking.

    1. TimNYC

      Well... just because the Heritage Foundation *as an organization* has undergone all these changes, it does not mean that every analyst who *works* there has no integrity. It's entirely possible that there may still be good work coming out of individual analysis, though the crackdown does make that far less likely.

      Additionally, if they do reporting that is either about the Heritage Foundation or involves it in some way, talking to people in the organization about it may well be perfectly reasonable and normal, depending on the subject.

      That said... yes, I think it would perhaps be best if they were not relied upon as any kind of policy authority, at least not until the current leaders are ousted and a better organizational culture installed.

      1. GregS

        (Just because the foundation has no integrity, it) does not mean that every analyst who *works* there has no integrity.

        I dont know about that. If you choose to continue working at an organization without integrity, what can we make of your integrity?

        1. TimNYC

          Fair, perhaps, but only up to a point. I have a friend in real life who is despairing of the policies her managers have been implementing — mostly to new hires, old employees are grandfathered in and get to avoid the worst of it — but she finds a lot of what they're doing, lately, morally repugnant. However, finding a new job isn't something that can be done in a single day unless you're very lucky indeed, and most people are (sensibly) loath to quit a job that meets their basic financial needs until they have a replacement lined up...

          They might be sending out their resumes, but job searches take time, especially in highly-competitive fields with an academic bent, like public policy.

          1. GregS

            Yeah thats fair. But any new hires at Heritage- i.e. those who start now, knowing what they are joining, have no excuse. People who are senior enough to be financially stable and able to tolerate a job search while briefly unemployed have no excuse. If everyone is always given the excuse of "well you were just doing what was right for you financially" then there are just no standards for behavior.

          2. TimNYC

            I'd agree with that!

  16. Jim Hahn

    Interesting article especially how it referrers the Pres. Reagan’s time…….how much as the Democratic party moved to the left since then ?

    The conservative intellectual today seems like someone who lives above all the negative impacts of an ever-growing federal bureaucracy take over more and more of everyday people’s lives. And that bureaucracy seems to be run be people with more and more liberal views every year.

  17. Cheves Ligon

    Jim DeMint’s damage to the GOP and the conservative movement runs apace. He outrageously quit his Senate seat 2 years in to take the $1 million salary, chauffeured car, and easy schedule. He private jetted the country to push the “Defund Obamacare” shutdown nonsense. And look what he left behind.

    Absolutely baffling.

    1. JR

      I had a bad feeling when I heard that Heritage had hired a politician to be its CEO.

      Turns out, I was not wrong.

  18. George Skinner

    Trying to articulate any sort of coherent intellectual framework around Trump and MAGA isn’t going to work. HR McMaster was one of the most brilliant minds to come up in the Army in decades, and couldn’t do it for national security policy when he was national security adviser. Instead, the movement is based around emotion (particularly resentment) and mapped to the whims of one particular undisciplined, uninformed person.

    1. Pat Riot

      From a Heritage perspective it's based on *pure power*. Win elections for the GOP regardless of what that even means.

      1. George Skinner

        I think it's more venal than that. The power they're interested in is *their own* power and influence. Winning elections for Republicans furthers that end, but the key is maintaining the power of their institution.

        1. Pat Riot

          Sure. But it's worth noting that this is *new*. People used to go to work for these things (instead of say going to work in business and making more money) because they wanted to change things for (what they saw as) the better. Not anymore.

  19. Ray Keating

    The fall of another great conservative institution during the era of Trump/populism.

  20. Linda Beggs

    Depressing, yet informative, article.

    I will never understand how people on the right sacrificed their credibility on the wave of nationalism. Will there be no conservative institution* left intact?

    *The Dispatch excepted

    1. Alan

      Because when your policies (pro market mostly at heritage) are broadly unpopular you make deals with devils so that the greater good (as heritage sees it) can happen

    2. Cheves Ligon

      Amen. At least we know who the actual conservatives are!

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