Is the new "Conservative Promise" Really Just a Fascist Manifesto?

On the surface the "2025 Mandate for Leadership-- The Conservative Promise" represents standard conservative values. But it's far more sinister.

In 1979, the Heritage Foundation announced an effort to develop a conservative policy playbook for reducing government scope, under the assumption that it would be useful when the Republicans re-gained power in Congress. The document has evolved over the years and the "2025 Mandate for Leadership" version, subtitled "The Conservative Promise" includes myriad policy recommendations from a conservative perspective for a hypothetical future Republican president. The massive, 920-page document offers a blueprint for the next conservative administration that would impact all areas of government.

On the surface, the manifesto contains some traditional conservative policy priorities such as:

- Limit government power and bureaucracy by eliminating agencies, regulations, and social programs

- Promote traditional Judeo-Christian social values, restrict abortion and LGBTQ rights

- Deregulate industries to spur free market economic growth

- Reorient U.S. foreign policy toward unilateralism and national self-interest over global cooperation

- Increase military spending and projection of U.S. power abroad, adopt more aggressive posture

While the document seems to offer the usual conservative arguments, it also fails to recognize bipartisan concerns associated with blunt acceptance of those ideas. For example:

- There is a risk that implementation of the ideas presented might have significant and unintended consequences. It has been argued that incremental, bipartisan changes would be a better approach to governance.

- As one peruses the document, there is a clearly resonant and deeply embedded assumption from start to finish that the proposed conservative policies are inherently correct. As is typical in most GOP/conservative argumentation, the document does not resonate well with progressive or moderate policy rationales and, most importantly, as we have seen time and time again from the right-wing of the Republican party, it makes the logical error of assuming that the presented perspectives are "self-evident" — no sense of evidentiary support is provided to substantiate the positions taken (the “trust me, I know things” approach).

- The document is also chock full of partisan bias as it overstates the problems and policy failures of recent administrations and fails miserably in presenting and acknowledging actual context in stating it's conclusions, much less a tacit acknowledgment of policy complexities.

- One of the more egregious errors lies in the presentation of a very limited set of interests and ideologies without due consideration to the benefit of balancing competing priorities, rights, and ethical tradeoffs. And this complete disregard and disinterest for bipartisanship should be an ominous warning sign about the underlying intentions.

- But perhaps the MOST concerning aspect of the document, is that it proposes a consolidation of power in the executive branch that would fundamentally change our form of government through dramatic increases in executive branch authority, and erosion of the constitutional system of checks and balances.

One of the many scary parts of this “roadmap” is how it seeks to place the entire Executive Branch of the U.S. federal government under direct presidential control, eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and other agencies. Such an action would not only eviscerate the Rule of Law, it would likely fundamentally change our form of government. There is a lot to digest -- but, anyone who values our constitution and form of government should reject this document and anyone who supports it.

The far-right MAGA conservatives are making a clear attempt here to remove federal employees that they deem to be standing in the way of former president Trump's agenda and replacing them with ultra-conservative "yes-men" who will support right-wing governance. The document proposes the reassignment of 10's of thousands of Federal careerists as at-will workers. While on the surface, that doesn't sound terrible if you are a fan of smaller government, there is no proposed control strategy to prevent this proposal from being utilized as a battering ram to remove resistance to the sitting president's wishes and policies within the workings of government -- thus completely upending the constitutionally intended system of checks and balances.

To restate -- the Project 2025 document includes a top-to-bottom overhaul of the Department of Justice. This overhaul would include curbing the independence of the DoJ, and prevent the FBI from restricting the dissemination of misinformation / propaganda. The document also supports the elimination of recent Pentagon initiatives on diversity, equity and inclusion.

While the Constitution prescribes reliance on the US Congress to establish policy legislatively, the Project 2025 manifesto suggests a more "unitary view" of executive power that would dramatically increase the power of the Executive Branch to act alone and unilaterally -- this includes elimination of the requirement of congressional notification prior to certain foreign arms sales . If this sounds like it is moving in the direction of a authoritarian fantasy dictatorship, it's probably because that is precisely what is being proposed by the right-wing conservatives in Project 2025.

The well-known common themes among fascist movements throughout history have included authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism. Other aspects of fascism such as perception of decadence, anti-egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas. With this in mind, go back and review what the right-wing GOP is asking you to accept with Project 2025 — because they tick-off every check-box in the fascist playbook.

The far-right GOP proponents seem to be lining up behind Project 2025. But, depending upon how you view things, it is just as likely that Project 2025 will be viewed and considered for what it truly seems to be: nothing more than a lightly-veiled fascist manifesto. And as Stephen Graham stated in his 2023 book, “The Faces of Fascism,” the combined originators of fascism, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco, ensured that “fascism had merely stated loudly and repeatedly what it stood against without ever hinting what it was actually in favor of” — much like today’s GOP and Project 2025. And that should be enough to scare all of us.

Click here to read the Full Text of Project 2025.

https://medium.com/@wjcornelius/an-independents-analysis-of-the-2025-presidential-transition-project-s-mandate-for-leadership-f2388fdd55d1#id_token=eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6ImY1ZjRiZjQ2ZTUyYjMxZDliNjI0OWY3MzA5YWQwMzM4NDAwNjgwY2QiLCJ0eXAiOiJKV1QifQ.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.A1gfZvD7osCcWeWcn2axlHwW6yKyhUQWNVXXMf0Zn6BmC-cxYzXcmd750drvUBDjmkQk5ccOuw-5rMi37lQVDuRjz_6giOFFdiWD2EmsjoEKOwKon4qtFfq6OEVsZPLP_X1mSAUppPTLEDYYRLY9O8GcE2m_WW6giDc9vEuXNJlOtl5FCW3igC_AzFOC83dWu0sOt4buQOph0tkekCcQjdj3qrfpEWPr1JwKfg96llGsZNvtlp-9aHwJZiHFao0iZ8b8LzQgs73d_ILcUnK6nSeqNqKghXjMZ9FZax5OtbJ5i8CQyRfw_w1KkKGge_6QGpI17ndZ6mpBHikLD9U10g

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/conservatives-aim-to-restructure-u-s-government-and-replace-it-with-trumps-vision

https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf

Graham, S. (2023). The faces of fascism - Mussolini, Hitler & Franco: Their paths to power. BLKDOG Publishing.