Jim DeMint: Conservative ideas need a new message

By Jim DeMint, Published: January 10

Jim DeMint represented South Carolina in the Senate from 2005 to 2013 and in the House from 1999 to 2005.

The U.S. Senate reached an all-time low — a hard mark to achieve — last week as I said my goodbyes to rejoin the real world. The “fiscal cliff” theatrics ended with a predictable non-solution that raised taxes on all U.S. workers and added more weight to the millstone the federal government has hung around our necks.

A day after that “achievement,” I left Congress and moved across the street to the Heritage Foundation, where the mission is to formulate and promote conservative ideas. It is from Heritage — of which I will become president in April — that I aim to take this message directly to the American people. Why? Because the federal government will not stop spending, borrowing and growing our debt until the American people force it to stop.

Conservative ideas work. Numerous states are demonstrating that low taxes, right-to-work laws, school choice, energy development and other common-sense policies improve the lives of everyone. Conversely, progressive central planning has failed throughout history and is still failing today.

The right ideas have the power to change the course of America, which is why the place to launch a conservative revival is the Heritage Foundation. It used to be said that Willie Mays’s glove was where triples went to die. Well, Congress has become the place where good ideas go to die. In contrast, think tanks such as Heritage use objective analysis to discover why ideas work or don’t.

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