The real reason Jim DeMint got the boot

[corbe]

The real reason Jim DeMint got the boot

Even as his alliance with Donald Trump boosted Heritage's influence, old-timers saw a more fundamental problem taking shape.

 By Eliana Johnson  and Nancy Cook
  | 05/02/17 01:14 PM EDT
 

Jim DeMint's ouster from The Heritage Foundation came as a shock to the hundreds of scholars and staffers who've seen the organization's political influence grow thanks to DeMint’s controversial decision to align the leading conservative think tank closely with Donald Trump.

But interviews with over a dozen sources at the center of the drama suggest Heritage's stewards — particularly DeMint's predecessor, Ed Feulner, and Fuelner's sharp-elbowed protégé, Mike Needham — became convinced that DeMint was incapable of renewing the foundation's place as an intellectual wellspring of the conservative movement.

Days of speculation, tension, and internal bickering were set to come to a close on Tuesday: The organization's board members are expected to announce DeMint's removal around midafternoon, a decision first reported by POLITICO. Feulner, who presided over the institution for 37 years, is expected to be named interim president and to preside over a search for a permanent replacement.

Ironically, it was Feulner’s decision in 2010 to create an advocacy organization, Heritage Action, and to install Needham atop it, that sowed the seeds of DeMint's fall. Though the think tank and the advocacy arm are legally separate entities, several sources familiar with the institution's internal dynamics say that both organizations became increasingly focused on mediating fights among congressional Republicans rather than on generating policy ideas. The problem existed before DeMint took the helm of Heritage in 2013, but has mushroomed since, Heritage insiders said.

But if DeMint wasn’t the source of the problem, sources say, board members concluded he wasn’t the solution, either.

“When DeMint went in, Heritage became very political. It changed from a highly respected think tank to just a partisan tool and more ideological — more of a tea party organization than a think tank,” said Mickey Edwards, one of the organization’s founding trustees and a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma. “Hopefully, Feulner, if he takes over, can help reestablish Heritage as what it used to be during the Reagan years.”

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/02/why-jim-demint-was-ousted-from-heritage-237876

[geronl]

Aligning it with Trump was the problem

[Cripplecreek]

Aligning it with Trump was the problem

Everyone Trump touches turns to crap.