Even corrupt institutions can reach a tipping point

Will they change it to “The Trump Heritage Foundation”?

I have never, to put it mildly, been a fan of the Heritage Foundation. Ever since I started paying attention to Heritage’s work — which I started doing when I began writing for The New York Times, 26 years ago — the foundation has been a propaganda shop pretending to be a think tank, a producer of dishonest “research” purporting to justify a right-wing agenda of deregulation, dismantling the social safety net, and tax cuts for the rich. I wrote at length about Heritage’s deplorable record back in November.

Still, Heritage could have been worse. And sure enough, it has gotten worse in recent months, with Kevin Roberts, the foundation’s president — and the architect of Project 2025 — making it clear that he’s fine with white nationalist antisemites like Nick Fuentes.

And a funny thing has happened. It turns out that even at a fundamentally corrupt institution like Heritage there are lines you can’t cross. Suddenly, Heritage is experiencing a mass exodus of staff. In the latest wave of departures, more than a dozen staffers left to join an organization led by former Vice President Mike Pence. Heritage is, essentially, losing everyone who is even marginally competent or has any kind of reputation to protect.

My guess is that there have long been many people at Heritage who were privately disgusted at what the organization had become. I never said they were stupid. But they lacked the courage to leave until they saw their colleagues jumping ship. Then there was a mass rush for the exit.

Roberts may imagine that he and Heritage can ride out this storm, but I don’t believe they can.

Heritage has never been a source of credible research, but its role in the conservative movement has been to provide an intellectual gloss by producing what looked to the gullible — i.e., many people in the news media — like credible research. For example, back in 2002 David Broder, widely described as “the dean of the Washington press corps,” praised Heritage for its “intellectual honesty.” That was foolish even then, but I don’t think anyone would say that now.

But now that its illusion of credibility is gone, what is Heritage good for? It’s not as if MAGA wants to see any genuine policy research, or as if a hollowed-out Heritage would be capable of doing such research even if it tried.

Pence may imagine that his nonprofit, Advancing American Freedom, can take over the role that Heritage used to fill. If so, I believe that he’s wrong, at least as long as MAGA rules the American right. Donald Trump has no use for expertise, or even the illusion of expertise, and whoever comes next is unlikely to feel differently.

But MAGA’s rule may not last forever. Indeed, while I may be making too much of the demise of one organization, I see Heritage’s fall as a preview of how MAGA as a political movement will eventually implode.

For white Christian nationalism — which is now clearly MAGA’s essence — remains very much a minority position.

Extremists have been able to gain so much power only thanks to support from ordinary conservatives. In the past it was largely about greed: people who wanted right-wing economic policies promoted Christian nationalists because they thought they could use them. Indeed, the creation of the Heritage Foundation and the creation of the Federalist Society — which stuffed the courts with ultra-religious judges, because secular conservatives had in the past turned moderate once on the bench — were part of the same power grab.

Today greed, while still part of the story, has increasingly been supplanted by fear: conservatives who aren’t Christian nationalists, who privately loathe much of what the Trump administration is doing, have become afraid to dissent.

What the debacle at Heritage suggests, however, is that many of these fellow-travelers have limits. As I said, there are lines even corrupt institutions can’t cross without provoking mass defections. And such defections, are, I believe, how MAGA will eventually be relegated to the dustbin of history.

What would a Heritage-style implosion of MAGA look like? It would involve large numbers of Republicans who secretly despise Trump and Trumpism going public and withdrawing their support.

I don’t know what form their defection would take. Would it involve a serious effort to wrest control of the G.O.P. back from extremists? Would it involve elected Republicans cooperating with Democrats? Would it mean leaving the G.O.P. altogether? America hasn’t seen a new major political party emerge since, well, the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s, but this doesn’t mean it can never happen again.

All I can say is that it’s unwise to assume that non-MAGA Republicans will remain docile indefinitely in the face of ever more extreme corruption and bigotry at the top of their party. And their rebellion can’t come soon enough. For the time being, election victories by Democrats are our only hope of saving American democracy. But in the longer run, we need two decent, sane political parties.

So let’s hope that the Heritage implosion is an omen of the de-MAGAfication to come.