Thursday, November 3, 2016

Republican Think Tanks Mourning Their Party

The Republican establishment, many of whom are housed within think tanks across the United States, is feeling a bit uneasy about Donald Trump with less than a week to go before Election Day.

Here is an excerpt from Politico Magazine:
As the country geared up for the third and final presidential debate last week, the fellows of the storied conservative Hoover Institution gathered in Palo Alto to present their research to the think tank's wealthy patrons. Elsewhere in America, in the homestretch of perhaps the weirdest election the nation has ever experienced, things were getting tense, excited, even feverish. But the rooms at the Hoover retreat at Stanford University could have doubled as a funeral parlor, and the lectures as eulogies for a bygone era. Larry Diamond, a prominent political sociologist known to fellow scholars as “Mr. Democracy,” talked about the breakdown of the party system. Kori Schake, a National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration and adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign, spoke about how the U.S. was endangering the international order it had itself created. Peter Berkowitz, a conservative political scientist and commentator, gave a talk about “the unraveling of civil society” in America.

Of course, not all think tanks and think tankers are sad.  After all, many of the 100-plus people on Donald Trump's transition team come from conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation.

Ed Feulner, former President of the Heritage Foundation (and a policy adviser on Trump's transition team), is reportedly trying to raise $100,000 at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's request, for the Trump transition to cover costs that aren't covered by federal funding.  This week, Feulner is hosting a $5,000-a-person breakfast with Christie at the swanky Metropolitan Club.

Among the key players on Trump's transition team are Myron Ebell, Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Paul Winfree, Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, and Ed Meese, a Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at Heritage.