(LifeSiteNews) – The latest president of the conservative Heritage Foundation recently offered a stinging rebuke of comments about the state of the conservative movement by two prominent voices in its establishment faction, highlighting ongoing tensions among so-called populists, elites, and more.
Kevin Roberts, who became Heritage’s seventh president in late 2021, was reacting to a recap of remarks delivered by Republican strategist Karl Rove and longtime columnist George Will at the LBJ Presidential Library on “The Future of Conservatism.”
Rove lamented the rising influence of a strain of populism “based on a belief that the whole system is rigged, that the elites have rigged the entire system against ordinary Americans,” past failures to enact an immigration “compromise” under which millions of illegal aliens would have been granted amnesty, feared that a hardline stance on abortion would “tear the Republican Party apart,” and warned that if Russia prevails in taking over Ukraine it will be an “existential threat” to American security.
Will, who despite his onetime reputation as a conservative thinker advocated voting for Democrats in 2018 and 2020, described populism as antithetical to conservatism, concurred about the need for foreign workers, lamented the lack of “gatekeepers” to weed out extremists, and suggested that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin’s purported opposition to “gay rights” was blinding so-called “national conservatives” to his true nature.
Both men saw former president and 2024 candidate Donald Trump as a malignant force in GOP politics, but instead of embracing Florida’s popular, conservative Gov. Ron DeSantis as an alternative, Will floated the names of Republican Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona, Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Brian Kemp of Georgia, and Bill Lee of Tennessee, as well as Biden administration Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a Democrat. Rove, meanwhile, suggested nominating someone “moderate.”
At one point, the two criticized Heritage by name, with Will snarking that its current iteration was “taking the think out of think tank” and Rove alleging that it was turning toward isolationism in response to pressure from “MAGA donors.”
Roberts said he found the event “comical,” and that Rove and Will are “out of touch with reality and living in a bygone era,” failing to recognize that the modern Left are not the same liberals as 20 years ago and having “no idea what is motivating working-class conservatives.”
“Conservatives long ago rejected uncontrolled immigration & an interventionist foreign policy,” he argued. “There’s nothing conservative about being the world’s policemen & opening the borders for mass immigration. This goes against national sovereignty. To see these pundits still clamoring for ideas espoused by John McCain & Ted Kennedy explains why conservatives distrust the ‘elites’ and ‘adults in the room.’ Gay marriage, open borders, and Bush’s foreign policy are not the future of conservatism — it’s the opposite!”
“We put the ‘think’ before ‘tank,’” Roberts quipped in conclusion, claiming that Will “just wants the tanks without thinking.”
From the 1980s through the 2000s, conservatives faced a much different political adversary. We should stop pretending today's far-Left radicals are akin to the liberals of yesteryear.
The woke war raged by today's Left is fundamentally different from what Reagan & others faced.
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) December 1, 2022
Conservatives long ago rejected uncontrolled immigration & an interventionist foreign policy. There's nothing conservative about being the world's policemen & opening the borders for mass immigration. This goes against national sovereignty.
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) December 1, 2022
This once again shows how out of touch the elite political class is with everyday Americans. @KarlRove's complaints about a certain "element" of our movement is like @HillaryClinton's complaining about "deplorables"? (The chattering class thinks the peasants need to pipe down.)
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) December 1, 2022
Conservatives do have a positive vision for America's future—and @Heritage is fighting tirelessly for this country each and every day.
We put the "think" before "tank." @GeorgeWill just wants the tanks without thinking.
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) December 1, 2022
In fact, Heritage under Roberts is not the isolationist mouthpiece Rove and Will framed it as. The think-tank president has previously argued that the United States should assist the “heroic” Ukrainians and that it is “in the interest of America to stop Vladimir Putin,” but that rushing to approve spending packages with too much waste and too little oversight was not the way to go about it.
Still, the dueling comments offer a glimpse of yet another divide within the fractured conservative movement, chiefly between establishment-aligned figures whose views align with business interests and those who claim to speak for political outsiders and the grassroots of Middle America.
Such divisions are not as clean as many assume, however. The establishment and some populists share a disinterest in social issues such as marriage, for instance, as antipathy for GOP leadership stems from multiple sources. For some, it is rooted in a desire for a more aggressive, less compromising fiscal and social conservatism that simply seeks lasting results on the things the Republican Party has long claimed to support; for others, it is born out of fixation on a collection of trade, economic, and foreign policy goals at odds with conventional conservative thinking.