What Jim DeMint's ouster says about the conservative movement's identity crisis

It's as if the conservative movement went straight from adolescence to senility

Jim DeMint.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

What do you get when you're on the winning team in Washington? In the case of Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation until just yesterday, you get fired.

You might chalk this up to internal politics. After all, DeMint lost a power struggle inside the heavyweight conservative think tank. But he's also a casualty — not the first, and certainly not the last — of the conservative movement's drifting sense of purpose and identity.

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Daniel McCarthy

Daniel McCarthy is director of the Novak Journalism Fellowship Program at the Fund for American Studies, the editor of Modern Age, and a columnist at The Spectator. His freelance journalism has appeared in a variety of publications in the U.S. and internationally, including the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph, The National Interest, and Reason.