Project 2025 ... and 1921, and 1973, and 1981 [View all]

Terrifying blueprints for the next Republican presidency are a quadrennial tradition.


BY RICK PERLSTEIN JULY 10, 2024

First things first: The Heritage Foundation’s 900-page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, the anchor of the marquee right-wing think tank’s Project 2025, is not what you’ve heard. It’s not some book of magic spells for President Trump’s minions to cast, and poof goes away every last vestige of truth, justice, and the American way. For one thing, much of it is too dumb to accomplish anything at all.

Consider the part on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the chapter on the Department of Homeland Security, bylined by OG MAGA superfreak (and former Trump DHS official) Ken Cuccinelli. I turned it over for review to an acquaintance with 16 years’ experience devising disaster management plans for states and municipalities. They immediately spotted that one budget recommendation contradicts another, such that the first (intended to defund humanitarian functions at the border, naturally) would be “useless if both recommendations were to carry.” Also, they said this: “The reorganization recommendations are 100% insane. CISA in DOT? FEMA in DOI? Shewwww!”

SNIP

And yes, there is plenty of blunt insanity, too. But, bottom line, this is a complicated document. “Conservatives in Disarray” is precisely the opposite message from that conveyed by all the coverage of Project 2025. But it is an important component of this complexity, and why this text should be picked apart, not panicked over, and studied both for the catastrophes it portends and the potential it provides.

These are great, big, blinking red “LOOK AT ME” advertisements of vulnerabilities within the conservative coalition.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/