When he was in the Senate, Jim DeMint wasn’t shy about trying to recruit conservatives he thought would buck the Republican Party establishment and gum up the collegial workings of the legislative process.
Now on the outside, running the Heritage Foundation, the former senator from South Carolina may have even more levers to pull as he puts the full weight of the conservative think tank behind the effort to defund President Obama’s health care law — and in the process becoming a tremendous headache for many fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“Some people love him, some people hate him,” said John Feehery, a Republican Party strategist. “He has never been someone who wanted to be a deal-cutter. Jim DeMint is someone who wants to push the party to the right. He seems to want to spend most of his attention going after Republicans.”Here is what the article says on DeMint possibly losing clout:
His hardball tactics even might have led to friction with the strongly conservative House Republican caucus. The National Journal reported last week that Heritage officials were disinvited from attending private strategy sessions of the conservative House Republican Study Group after the think tank harshly criticized the farm bill passed by the House.
The defund Obamacare tour, which started in Arkansas in mid-August, put Mr. DeMint at odds with a number his former Republican colleagues in the Senate, including fellow South Carolinian Sen. Lindsey Graham.The entire article can be read here.
The Heritage Foundation was recently ranked as the 18th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was rated the 9th best think tank in the US. It was also rated as the #1 think tank in the world in terms of best use of social media and the Internet. Heritage was also rated as the 10th best think tank in the world in terms of most significant impact on public policy.