Pushing a conservative agenda does not threaten ‘democracy’

The Heritage Foundation and center-right teams are working collectively to make sure a potential Trump presidency will implement socially and fiscally conservative insurance policies. But liberal teams and commentators worry these transition plans are a menace to democracy.

Project 2025, in accordance with its description, “paves the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars: a policy agenda, Presidential Personnel Database, Presidential Administration Academy, and playbook for the first 180 days of the next Administration.” 

Goals embrace stopping the State Department from pushing a leftist agenda. The United States ought to not “impose radical abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives” overseas, in accordance with one recommendation.  

Aid to Latin America ought to promote “labor and pension reforms, lower taxes, and deregulation in order to increase trade and investment within the region and with the United States as the genuine path to economic and political stability.”

Project 2025 additionally recommends restoring organic actuality to federal laws and not pushing an LGBT agenda.

But fiscal and conservative insurance policies proposed by Project 2025 “would in fact overhaul U.S. democracy and affect nearly everything from abortion rights to health care access to overtime pay and education,” according to the Center for American Progress.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) mentioned Project 2025 “is a radical, extreme, pro-authoritarianism plan” and “attacks our nation’s founding principles, such as our system of checks and balances, freedom of speech and of the press, and separation of church and state.”

He helped form a congressional “task force” to battle in opposition to Project 2025 and “serve as a central hub for pro-democracy Members of Congress, civil society, and affected communities to coordinate on examining, highlighting, preempting, and counteracting this rightwing plot to undermine democracy.”

It is not a menace to the Constitution and checks and balances when conservatives advocate for his or her concepts. Lieu and others do have a position in supporting democracy: They can introduce laws, they’ll vote down payments pushing concepts they do not like, they usually maintain the purse strings.

However, if abortion restrictions get handed, the federal authorities restores the historic definition of intercourse and gender, and international assist relies on monetary reforms, democracy will not endure. 

University of Pennsylvania Professor Anthea Butler disagrees.

She mentioned that tying international assist to pro-life insurance policies, as Project 2025 proposes, is an instance of “Christian nationalism” spreading “around the world.” MSNBC host Ali Veshi, who was interviewing Butler, in contrast it to “colonialism.”

The international assist concern is a microcosm of the broader debate round Project 2025: Is it okay to make use of the levers of presidency to push sure insurance policies? In common, sure. 

President Barack Obama’s administration also tied international assist to international locations agreeing with its stance on abortion. What made Obama’s use of international assist flawed is that it pushed a dangerous coverage: on this case, support for abortion. But tying international assist to the safety of human life is a good coverage. 

Most individuals are probably positive with international assist {dollars} having different strings hooked up to them, comparable to a promise to crack down on intercourse trafficking or baby labor. 

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Neither is it colonialism to offer a sure kind of assist for a sure objective. For instance, it’s not colonialism if Congress allocates Ukrainian assist for use particularly for meals or weapons for the nation to defend itself in opposition to Russia.

That is simply politics, and it’s a part of our democracy.

Matt Lamb is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential weblog. He is an affiliate editor for the College Fix, which not too long ago acquired a grant from the Heritage Foundation for an unrelated venture.