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We Need Comprehensive Reform That Will Make America The Best Place In The World To Invest And Do Business. -Jim DeMint Facebook: @bluemoon.thoughts https://www.facebook.com/BlueMoon.Thoughts/ Instagram: @bluemoon_thoughts Tumblr: bluemoon-thoughts

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At 61, DeMint is not looking for a quiet retirement. 61 is not very old for a U.S. Senator. Rather, he stated yesterday that his goal is to exert even more political leverage than was available to him as a member of the world’s most powerful legislative body. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, DeMint conceded that while he wields “enormous power” in his current capacity, assuming the Heritage Foundation presidency will afford him greater power. (You may have noticed that accrual of “power” is a key theme.) “They were hoping and praying for a few members of Congress to stand with them,” DeMint wrote in a 2011 memoir, The Great American Awakening: Two Years that Changed America, Washington, and Me. “Something deeply spiritual was happening in the nation.” For him, the “Tea Party movement” was a fundamentally “spiritual” movement to change the moral character of America, not a movement principally focused on reigning in nebulous “spending.” As president of an agenda-setting “Establishment Republican” institution, DeMint’s campaign of spiritual warfare is destined to continue.

Heritage has always been an unusually politicized think tank. As Troy recounts in his essay, it was founded by conservatives who thought the America Enterprise Institute was inexcusably reluctant to involve itself in politics. They relied on campaign techniques like direct mail to raise money and worked aggressively to play a friendly, advisory role to the Reagan administration. Yet even the Heritage Foundation is headed by a former policy guy: Edwin John Fuelner Jr. began his career at the Center for Strategic and International Studies before moving to the Hill and becoming the director of the Republican Study Committee, the policy arm of House conservatives. But DeMint doesn’t have even one foot in the policy world. He’s a politician who made his mark practicing a particularly hard-edged form of electoral politics: raising money to undermine insufficiently conservative Republicans. Heritage, which now has a direct political arm in the Heritage Action Foundation, isn’t just bringing in a politicized policy wonk. It’s bringing in an unusually politicized politician. That’s breaking new ground. None of this is a criticism of DeMint, or evidence that he won’t be effective at making Heritage an even more significant voice on the right. He just isn’t the guy who’s going to make it a more intellectually honest and creative force on the right. Which is a shame, because the right could use more intellectually honest think tanks. Their problem in the last few years has been that they’ve had a dearth of ideas and an excess of extremely conservative politicians. A place like Heritage could, under the right leadership, help reverse that trend. Now it’s poised to accelerate it. And if DeMint is successful at raising money and becoming more influential on the right, other think tanks will likely try to replicate his model. “At a moment when we have too much noise in politics and too few constructive ideas,” warned Troy, “these institutions may simply become part of the intellectual echo chamber of our politics, rather than providing alternative sources of policy analysis and intellectual innovation.” Heritage, far from trying to break the echo chamber, is trying to become the first voice in the chorus.

US Republican senator and Tea Party champion Jim DeMint is resigning to lead a conservative think tank. His office said the South Carolina politician would become president of the Heritage Foundation next month. The 61-year-old Republican was first elected to the Senate in 2004 and won a second term in 2010. South Carolina's Republican Governor, Nikki Haley, will appoint his successor, who will serve until a 2014 special election.