“The next conservative President will enter office on January 20, 2025, with a simple choice: greatness or failure. It will be a daunting test, but no more so than every other generation of Americans has faced and passed. The Conservative Promise represents the best effort of the conservative movement in 2023—and the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.”
With these words, the essential document of the sprawling conservative plan dubbed “Project 2025” is introduced. The Conservative Promise is a free, almost 900-page tome filled with policy proposals that promise to fight the “cultural Marxism” infiltrating our institutions and return to the golden age of conservatism represented by Ronald Raegan. It is virulently “anti-woke” and heavily connected to the core of the GOP principles. The Conservative Promise and wider Project 2025 lays bare the extreme nature of the Republican party.
The Conservative Promise presents four main fronts that summarize the project’s aims, each with its own alarming proposals. The first front is the “restor[ation of] the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect[ion of] our children.” Along with references to federal programs not being as important as family and marriage, this section says that “This starts with deleting…sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every…piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in… transgender ideology… has no claim to First Amendment protection…purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women…The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.” While in different circumstances, the idea of eliminating the terms “gender”, “abortion”, and “reproductive health” from government in the name of upholding the First Amendment (before saying that anyone who talks about “transgender ideology” should be imprisoned) might read as satire, this is unfortunately not written ironically.
The second front is dedicated to “dismantl[ing] the administrative state and return[ing] self-governance to the American people.” This part of the plan seems tamer, harkening back to the long tradition of “limited government” (allegedly) driving conservative politics, but it quickly turns extreme. The project blames “The Administrative State” (important federal agencies) for the spread of “The Great Awokening” (people being aware that inequality exists) and for essentially destroying democracy. From there, it advocates for a twisted version of limited government that includes increased presidential oversight in order to work against federal agencies, providing guidance on “how to shutter wasteful and corrupt bureaus and offices; how to muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government; how to restore the American people’s constitutional authority over the Administrative State; and how to save untold taxpayer dollars in the process.” Interestingly, this shuttering of wasteful bureaus and saving of taxpayer dollars doesn’t extend to the overfunded military; the country apparently needs to expand its nuclear arsenal and give the Department of Defence access to more resources. Simultaneously, the project advocates for eliminating the Department of Education, ending “government interference in energy decisions”, refocusing the Department of Energy on defense, and making the Environmental Protection Agency stop focusing on energy and land use. With the Department of Justice, the book advocates for reform focused on “pursuing a national security agenda aimed at external state and non-state actors, not U.S. citizens exercising their constitutional rights”, which is a funny way of alluding to the domestic terrorists that stormed the Capitol Building. This is just a small piece-there are sections on every federal agency-but this vision of selectively limited government and backwards reform would strip away social programs and the essential activities that these agencies participate in, in favor of a conservative political agenda.
The third front entails “defend[ing] our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.” In this section, the book tells us that liberals “believe in a kind of 21st century Wilsonian order in which the ‘enlightened,’ highly educated managerial elite runs things rather than the humble, patriotic working families who make up the majority of what the elites contemptuously call ‘fly-over country.'”, which is an interesting accusation coming from a party that consistently votes against social programs to help those “humble, patriotic working families” and votes for extreme tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy “elites”. While American liberals are not a paragon of the working class, conservatives cannot pretend to be any better. The statement that “nearly every…Wall Street hedge fund manager has more in common with a socialist…than with the parents at a high school football game” is ridiculous enough by itself, but when paired with the idea that America has become like this because of the “woke” influence of “elites”, we reach a whole new level of dystopian buzzword nightmare. Flipping between bashing international cooperation, immigration, “environmental extremism”, China, and Big Tech with surprising speed, this section says that open borders-which the United States does not have-have created a humanitarian crisis. It also alludes to immigrants causing a rise in crime and lower wages for workers (while conservatives oppose raising the minimum wage), and ultimately presents two main points: China is an enemy and an enemy only, and “elites” have “betrayed the American people”. Solutions include a host of unserious proposals, including cutting off economic engagement with China, sealing the border, and outlawing TikTok as “Chinese propaganda”.
The fourth and final front, the “secur[ity of] our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty,'” seems enticingly benign at first, until the line “When the Founders spoke of ‘pursuit of Happiness,’ what they meant might be understood today as in essence ‘pursuit of Blessedness.'” pops up. Some of this section’s many alarming quotes include, “Left to our own devices, the American people rejected European monarchy and colonialism just as we rejected slavery, second-class citizenship for women, mercantilism, socialism, Wilsonian globalism, Fascism, Communism, and (today) wokeism”, which pretends that radical social movements were widely popular, and “The promise of socialism—Communism, Marxism, progressivism, Fascism, whatever name it chooses—is simple: Government control of the economy can ensure equal outcomes for all people”, which presents a confusing list that can only be a twisted and nonsensical attempt at elementary horseshoe theory. After this, there’s some pretty hefty and mostly untrue claims about various countries around the world failing due to Socialism. This section doesn’t seem to have a real point, but is summarized as a need for vague economic policy reform and “educational opportunities outside the woke-dominated system of public schools and universities”.
The Conservative Promise is just one of the four “pillars” that make up Project 2025. The others take the extreme and bigoted backbone introduced in The Conservative Promise and add strange promises of recruitment, “education”, and mobilization. The book is just the beginning, serving as “functionally an invitation for you the reader—Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can.” The other pillars are vague: one calls on readers, presumably ordinary conservative voters, to submit applications to serve in the theoretical presidential administration. Another pillar offers free online classes and training to people looking to have a role in the administration. The fourth pillar is apparently a 180 day roadmap plan for the start of the administration, with an information page that directs back at The Conservative Promise with no other explanation. As underdeveloped as it is, Project 2025 still presents very real threats.
Unfortunately, this is not some fringe, far-right group spreading niche ideas, but rather an effort created by a large coalition of the most prominent conservative organizations in the nation. Regardless of the small nuances between Republican primary candidates, this is the 2025 Republican platform.
The Heritage Foundation is the main organization behind Project 2025, and as they love to tout in The Conservative Promise, their original 1981 Mandate for Leadership played a central role in many of the policies adopted during Ronald Raegan’s administration and the organization has stayed central to conservative politics ever since. Fieldston history department teacher Dr. Banks says that “The influence of [conservative think tanks] can not be overstated…these think-tanks are hugely influential in terms of coming out with studies [and] training so-called social scientists; they’re also a huge gravy train for former politicians to go serve on the board, and as advisors. They are also these sort of shadow institutions that fund certain initiatives, [and] if you look at the staff and the researchers and people who are associated with Heritage [over the years],… you will see it getting further right and more extreme. I think that that is a trend in conservative organizations.”
Any moderate version of the Republican party has effectively been relegated into obscurity; The Conservative Promise is the mission statement of The Heritage Foundation, which has represented the conservative movement in the U.S. for decades, and shows us exactly what a Republican presidential win in 2024 will look like.
Dr. Nancy Banks of the history department, says, “The rhetoric they use, some of it is borrowing from an old playbook, dating back to…the old Right…the idea that leftists or liberals are taking over the country…the stoking fear and saying that liberals have this agenda that is anti-American and is destroying the country, that is not something new.” Banks raises a great point: while the players may have changed, conservative ideology remains similar to what it’s always been. The real concern comes with the shift to the undermining of institutions and the electoral process that has come into play in recent years; Dr. Banks thinks that “one of the things that is different…is even Conservative activists in the 1970s and 80s, there were norms that they would not cross, so I think the undermining democracy, I think that this Project 2025 is really capitalizing on a lot of the stuff that Trump is talking about, and DeSantis…about the deep state, about lifelong bureaucracy and policymakers… I think that Project 2025 is a new threat.”
Project 2025 fully realizes the threat of the modern Republican party, representing all of its insane conspiracies and plans for destabilizing the United States. Democrats have trouble countering this sort of unified and direct messaging, which may pose a real problem for them going into the 2024 election. Whatever the outcome is, one thing remains clear: while voting Democratic may feel like settling for the lesser evil for many, the other option poses concrete threats to all.
