Next President of Heritage Foundation: Steve Bannon?

With Jim DeMint being forced out as head of the Heritage Foundation, there is lots of speculation about a possible long-term replacement.  Here is one possibility being floated:

Will blistering populist Steve Bannon replace fiery conservative Sen. Jim DeMint as the next president of the Heritage Foundation? Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham won't say.

Asked by Chris Wallace whether Heritage would be Bannon's "safety net as he's forced out of the White House," Needham demurred on "Fox News Sunday." "I can tell you," Needham replied, "there's a lot of speculation in the room and in the media that never misses a chance to divide and attack conservatives."

With that non-answer, speculation over the fate of Heritage Foundation will no doubt reach a new fever pitch. News of DeMint's ouster has already sent shockwaves throughout the think tank and reverberations through right wing circles in Washington, D.C.

Bannon has a close relationship with Heritage board member Rebekah Mercer, the wealthy daughter of a conservative hedge fund manager. Together they helped reshape the conservative political field, backing Trump when others wouldn't. Now they might be preparing to remodel the conservative ivory tower.

Here is more on Rebekah Mercer's ties to think tank land.  She has peppered conservative think tanks with tens of millions of dollars over the past several years.

Rumors were that Mr. Bannon had launched his own internal think tank within the White House, but some say that the think tank never really got off the ground.

With Bannon losing power within the White House, Rebekah Mercer (who has given millions to Breitbart News) urging him not to quit, and never having gotten a chance to run his own think tank, it is certainly conceivable that Mercer could be trying to orchestrate a Bannon move to Heritage.

Mercer is currently embroiled in a huge Internal Revenue Service (IRS) fight over billions of dollars, and having Bannon at Heritage could help in that battle.

In related news, Sebastian Gorka, a prolific think tanker who apparently served on Bannon's internal think tank, reportedly will be moving to a federal agency (and there is still a chance he could join Heritage).

Interestingly, in the past, Gorka has been funded by Thomas Saunders III, the current Chairman of the Heritage Foundation.

Update: Conservative lawmakers are now rallying to support Jim DeMint, and have released a letter praising him.  The letter is co-written by Mark Walker (R-NC) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

Update II: Daniel Drezner, a longtime think tank watcher, suggests that Mike Needham would become the next president of the Heritage Foundation.

Billionaire's Daughter Throwing Big Money at Think Tanks

In the think tank world, it pays to be friends with billionaires.  The latest example comes from The Washington Post:

Mitt Romney had just lost the 2012 presidential election, and a group of wealthy donors assembled in New York's University Club was trying to figure out what had gone wrong.  Suddenly, a young woman stood up before the largely male crowd and delivered an unsparing critique of the Republican's technology and canvassing operations.

Thomas Saunders III, chairman of the Heritage Foundation's Board of Trustees, was impressed.  "Who is that?" he asked the man next to him.

Soon, there would be few in conservative policy and political circles who did not know the name Rebekah Mercer.

Galvanized in part by the Republicans' 2012 White House loss, the middle daughter of billionaire hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer has rattled the status quo by directing her family's resources into an array of investments on the right.  In the past six years, the Mercers have poured tens of millions into Republican super PACs, Washington think tanks, state policy shops, a film-production company, a data analytics operation and one of the country's most provocative online conservative news outlets.

The article goes on to note that Rebekah Mercer jointed the board of the Goldwater Institute and her family foundation gave nearly $1 million to the think tank between 2011 and 2014.  The family foundation have nearly $35 million to conservative think tanks and policy groups between 2009 and 2014.  And she is now on the board of trustees of the Heritage Foundation.

The Hill also notes that Mercer has been a big supporter of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Think Tank Watch recently wrote about a new trend of billionaires starting their own think tanks.  Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on the favorite think tank of billionaires.