Project 2025 Bogeyman Falls Flat

• Portraying Project 2025 as “devious” and “dangerous” detracted attention from Biden’s poor debate performance

• Many of its fear-mongered policy prescriptions were dismissed by former president Trump

• It recommends staffing executive agencies with loyalists — as is the president’s prerogative

The story

In the days following last month’s presidential debate, President Biden’s declining mental state dominated the news. Democrats’ decreasing faith in Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump turned the spotlight directly on their intra-party turmoil.

To deflect heat off the president and his party, the left aimed floodlights at Project 2025, allegedly a Trump-approved policy plan to reshape America, should he hold office again.

Donald Trump was not shy about distancing himself from the plan amid a media onslaught which painted the project as “a very concrete manifestation of what could happen if Trump is inaugurated in January, whether or not Trump wants to admit it.”

Because Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposal is so lengthy, many critics aren’t pushing back against its granular policy prescriptions; it is being used instead as a shibboleth to frighten voters into thinking that Trump will enact sweeping reforms to bring about a “second American Revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it,” according to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

At 920 pages, Project 2025 is comprised of contributions from more than 400 authors — each with their own perspective on conservative policymaking. Naturally, some ideas are more extreme. But, left-leaning media and politicians are using those policy proposals to paint conservatives as radicals intent on completely remaking America.

The politics

The media is abuzz about Project 2025; The New York Times published a dozen articles, and The Washington Post published even more.

Business Insider claimed that Project 2025 “aims to enshrine radical conservative policies into the law and erode U.S. government checks and balances.”

MSNBC named a news segment “The 'evil genius' of Project 2025 and its attack on American freedom,” and asserted that the plan recommends abolishing the Department of Education and banning stem cell research.

Kamala Harris is using the policy blueprint to fundraise for her presidential campaign. Meanwhile, some on the left are praising the conservative think tank for producing its own in-depth analysis of its policy vision, and question why the left hasn’t produced its own version.

National Review’s Rich Lowry is calling Democrat attacks “hilariously irrational and unhinged” and makes the point that, if Donald Trump is democratically elected, he will have vested authority to assert “more control over the unelected bureaucracy.”

Michael Cuenco brushes aside left-wing criticism of the Heritage Foundation’s policy outline: “Beyond culture war bromides, Project 2025 is a largely incoherent hodgepodge of establishment conservative priorities.”

Because so many right-leaning contributors are sympathetic to — or are members of — the political establishment, Cuenco remarked, “there is little serious regard for the former president’s authentically populist instincts.”

Beyond the headlines

Many accusations leveled against Republicans about enacting the more radical proposals do not align with what high-level conservative politicians are actually advocating.

For instance, no federally elected Republican advocates eliminating free healthcare or preschool for 800,000 low-income children, as the left purports. Other criticisms of the plan’s "radical" policies are aimed at standard Republican priorities — like restructuring entitlements and reducing government overspending.

A powerful catapult of Project 2025’s sudden massive media presence was John Oliver’s episode of Last Week Tonight, when he dove into the project’s plans to enact conservative policy changes. Oliver specifically called out its intent to staff the White House and, indeed, the entire federal government with people who will not be a roadblock to enacting a Republican executive’s policy plans.

Oliver postulates that the Trump team never expected to win the 2016 election and got off to a slow start because there were not enough recruits to staff his government, leaving many Obama administration holdovers.

While it’s true that Project 2025 is compiling a list of conservative staffers for the administrative state, a democratically elected president has always had the authority to staff the government with whomever he pleases. The executive agencies serve at the pleasure of the president.

Although Donald Trump clarified that he is not affiliated with the Project 2025 policy vision, he has his own initiative — Agenda47. He recorded a series of videos addressing topics that he considers important.

Despite many of Trump’s former staffers having contributed to Project 2025, he is not a policy wonk with an interest in enacting sweeping controversial policies. With his recent shift toward the center, he is focused on common-sense governance rather than pushing the GOP's decades-old priorities.

Why it matters

The Democrat plan to spotlight the more controversial recommendations of Project 2025 will likely fall flat with the American public, since Donald Trump has publicly distanced himself. If the former president insists he won’t eliminate the Education Department or ban pornography, the accusations have no basis and won't stick.

The Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint does involve contributions of conservative intellectuals and political players. Project 2025 is not some fringe manifesto, but a serious work of conservative thought. While some aspects may require Republicans distancing themselves, one crucial objective remains — restaffing executive agencies, referred to among some conservatives as “the deep state.” For the next conservative president to implement significant changes, he will require a compliant federal bureaucracy.