DeMint’s Heritage Foundation Focuses on Political Message

The New York Times examines the Heritage Foundation’s shift in focus from research and policy to political action since Jim DeMint took over leadership of the conservative think thank last year.

Long an incubator for Republican ideas that was allied with the party establishment, Heritage has more closely aligned itself with Tea Party populism under Mr. DeMint, a former GOP senator with a background in marketing. He has bolstered the foundation’s media and Internet operations and energized Heritage Action, its political arm.

“The conservative movement has been derelict in not putting together an organized movement across this country,” Mr. DeMint told the Times.

According to former Heritage officials, some of the foundation’s most prominent scholars have departed in recent months, and research that ran counter to political goals has been squelched. Some congressional Republicans have begun criticizing the group’s more aggressive tactics.