New Conservatism: The Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation quickly became one of the leaders of conservative intellectual thought. President Reagan adopted its Mandate for Leadership as his administration’s operating manual, implementing nearly 60% of its policy recommendations. Four decades later, The Atlantic’s Molly Ball credited Heritage with turning Reagan’s Republican Party into “a hotbed of intellectual activity”.
Heritage launched with support from three key individuals. Richard Mellon Scaife, founder of “an informal network of influential, die-hard American conservatives determined” to save a country they thought was corrupt and in decline, was an early funder; his network included Powell. Another important funder, Joseph Coors, listed as one of Heritage’s founders, was familiar with Powell’s memo. Paul Weyrich, another founder, was a principle architect of the new conservatism and the coalition that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Heritage provided the intellectual justification for Reagan’s supply-side economics, which emphasized tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy as a means of stimulating investment and economic growth. Other Reagan-era policies that came out of Heritage included the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”), enterprise zones for redeveloping inner cities, and cuts in staffing at several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency.
As Ball noted in The Atlantic, Heritage’s influence continued with passage of a welfare reform bill following the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994. The market-based individual mandate that expanded health insurance coverage, signed into law by Massachusetts’ Republican Governor Mitt Romney in 2006, also originated with Heritage.
