By Jessie Seigel / October 20, 2024
As usual in a presidential election year, the media is busy handicapping the horserace, pushing the public's anxiety to a fever pitch with a variety of polls that seem to change direction minute by minute.
Historically, polls have been used as often to influence public behavior as to reflect or predict it. I have very little use for them, one way or the other. The only thing important at this point is to get out the vote and to vote oneself. And to do so not only for the president, the Senate and the House of Representatives, but for state elected positions--governors, secretaries of state, state attorney-generals, and state legislatures. That is crucial if the rule of law and democracy are to be saved. Other than that, we all must just wait and prepare for whatever comes.
In the meantime, this being October--the month of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls--I thought I might digress with a small horror story. Not about something of which we've currently been warned, but rather, a possible Republican plan that could come to pass if that party again gains control of the government. (Spoiler alert: The tale begins with Ronald Reagan and ends with JD Vance.)
The story starts with the fact that, wherever it has been able to do so, the Heritage Foundation has been manipulating the nation's policies for some decades. At a minimum, it had done so since the presidency of the actor, Ronald Reagan, who was its front man saying the lines given him. Heritage itself has stated this, although it modestly has called their connection a "partnership."
In 1980, Heritage provided Reagan's transition team a 1,100-page "Mandate for Leadership" containing detailed reactionary policy prescriptions for "everything from taxes and regulation to trade and national defense." Reagan gave copies to every member of his Cabinet. And Heritage boasts that Reagan's administration got Congress to act upon nearly two-thirds of the Mandate's 2,000 recommendations.
That, in my view, was the prelude to Heritage Foundation's current Project 2025 which, according to The Daily Beast, has had at least 140 former Trump employees involved in its drafting. It would be interesting to know whether and how many of them had connections to Heritage before they worked for Trump. Might Trump be a Heritage front man just as Reagan was without even knowing it? Certainly, he's shown his capacity to be influenced by flattery, monetary inducements and such into thinking he is calling shots actually manipulated by others.
On the other hand, if anyone is a true blue Heritage Foundation confederate, it is JD Vance. The Daily Beast reports that, as far back as 2017, Vance "championed" a collection of 29 essays compiled by Heritage--a precursor to the extreme policies being promoted by Project 2025 today, which "range from massive curtailment of reproductive rights and bans on 'woke propaganda' in schools to placing the entirety of the federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control." Vance even wrote a complimentary introduction to that 2017 Heritage essay collection.
In addition, the New York Times reported that in June, Vance announced "he had penned the foreword to a forthcoming book by Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and one of the driving figures behind Project 2025."
Although the book was originally to be published in September, Roberts has now delayed publication until after the election. According to Real Clear Politics, this has been done "because of the media firestorm sparked by Democratic criticism of the Heritage-led initiative Project 2025." Gee. Could they possibly be trying to hide their agenda? And Vance's role-to-be in it?
Donald Trump becomes more and more erratic and unstable by the day--from his bizarre ramblings and vituperative ranting to his silently swaying to tunes for 39 minutes at a town meeting where he is supposed to be taking questions. It is hard to conceive, should Trump manage to regain the White House--a nightmare in itself--that the Heritage Foundation would consider him a reliable partner. But JD Vance? He'd be reliable. Is it possible that Heritage maneuvered to get JD Vance into the vice-presidential spot? That there's an underlying plan even now to eliminate Trump--by the Constitution's 25th amendment or other means--and replace him with Vance, a staunch Heritage Foundation man who is much cleverer than Trump while being just as vicious and ruthless?
That prospect will likely do nothing to reduce political anxiety. But what more appropriate time for a scary story than the month of October? Happy Halloween!
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Very astute and insightful. Ron Seigel