THE FOXHOLE THEORY OF NETWORKS
Exploring Project 2025: The Command & Control Center of Movement Conservatism
The crosshairs of Project 2025 are centered squarely on secular American liberal democracy.
Over the past several days I have been searching out any and all information that I can find about the creation, operation, members, and structure of Project 2025.
So far it has been an incredible learning experience. My first exposure to the project came as a result of doing some basic research after reading “Conservatism” is no Longer Enough an essay written by Glenn Ellmers who is the Claremont Institute’s Salvatori Research Fellow in the American Founding. The essay or “Salvo” as it is called in The American Mind, a publication of the Claremont Institute, is essentially a call to intellectual arms to take back the governance of America in accordance with its author’s and associates’ desire to return to the so-called founding principles of the nation.
“Overturning the existing post-American order, and re-establishing America’s ancient principles in practice, is a sort of counter-revolution, and the only road forward.” Glenn Ellmers
The above quote and its source were first discussed by
at the following post:
From the essay I meandered through various websites and articles and next landed at the Heritage Foundation website reading a commentary written by Spencer Chretien who is the Associate Director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation (Project 2025.) Within his commentary he briefly discusses the four interconnected pillars that make up the foundation of Project 2025. As I read this commentary and followed the only two links it contained, both leading to the same website, namely the homepage of Project 2025, and upon returning to the commentary I realized a significant web of connections with multiple interconnections was at the heart and soul of the project. It was also here that I first began to get a sense for the phrase that is most often associated with the project and current movement conservatism, “Do you know what time it is?” This phrase which I first encountered at the essay by Ellmers at The American Mind began to make sense in light of that essay and several of the lines found within Chretien’s commentary.
“For decades, as the left has continued its march through America’s institutions, conservatives have been outgunned and outmatched when it comes to the art of government.”
“Belief in small government, strangely enough, has manifested itself in a belief among some conservatives that we should lead by example and not fill all political appointments. Belief in the primacy of the national security state has caused conservative administrations to defer political decisions to the generals and the intelligence community. The result has been decades of disappointment.”
“Fortunately, this situation is changing. The conservative movement increasingly knows what time it is in America. More and more of our politicians are willing to use the government to achieve our vision, because the neutrality of “keeping the government out of it” will lose every time to the left’s vast power.”
“The calls for a “new Church Committee” represent a momentous shift in energy; while conservatives used to lament liberal Sen. Frank Church’s original project as a kooky leftist attack against “The Brave Men And Women of Our Intelligence Community,” we’re now the ones agitating for Congress to go after the three-letter agencies.”
“When conservatives do finally make it into an administration, they often don’t know what to do or how to seize the gears of power effectively. Through their action, inaction, and their encyclopedic knowledge of volumes of technicalities about the federal workforce, certain career federal employees are masterful in tripping us up.”
“The usual suspects in the permanent political class will be ready for the next conservative administration. Will we be ready for them? That’s where Project 2025 comes in. We have two years, and one chance, to get this right.”
Naturally after I finished reading the commentary by Spencer I followed the links back to the Project 2025 website and began to read through its various sections and pages. I was particularly interested to do some further investigation into its “Advisory Board” as it was here my curiosity was especially piqued by the number of its members. In Spencer’s commentary at the Heritage Foundation website he stated that the Project had “brought together 45 (and counting) right-of-center organizations that are ready to get into the business of restoring this country through the combination of the right policies and well-trained people.” Upon checking out the member organizations who comprise the Advisory Board I counted 68 organizations that represents an increase of 23 additional organizations just since this past January when Spencer’s commentary was published at the Heritage Foundation website. That definitely caught my attention; It was at this point in time I began to realize that this was something that needed to be brought to greater attention to the democratic minded individuals of Substack, as I realized for myself that this Project was manifesting an amazing measure of organized operation and movement.
Since Sunday/Monday I have been following through with more internet research and reading to develop as comprehensive a picture as possible about this operation, especially after being prompted by a comment reply from a Substack reader to one of my comments written so as to bring attention to Project 2025, in her comment about the Advisory Board and its many members she blamed Leonard Leo, the former Federalist Society member known as the “key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority” for supplying dark money in support of the Project. So with this thought in mind I went in search of any connection Leo may have had with the Project. Sure enough his fingerprints are all over it along with numerous other persons of interest. Perhaps the most interesting of all persons who is strongly connected to the project via several of the different advisory organizations is Cleta Mitchell, the woman who was on the phone with Trump during his famous “Perfect phone call” looking for the 11,780 votes needed to turn the state of Georgia’s election results over in favor of Trump.
“An animating force behind the Bradley Foundation’s war on “election fraud” is Cleta Mitchell, a fiercely partisan Republican election lawyer, who joined the organization’s board of directors in 2012. Until recently, she was virtually unknown to most Americans. But, on January 3rd, the Washington Post exposed the contents of a private phone call, recorded the previous day, during which Trump threatened election officials in Georgia with a “criminal offense” unless they could “find” 11,780 more votes for him—just enough to alter the results. Also on the call was Mitchell, who challenged the officials to provide records proving that dead people hadn’t cast votes.”
My next article will take up with my findings about Leonard Leo and the Teneo Network, one of the advisory board members, which is where I encountered his “Foxhole theory of networks.”
At this point in time I have scores of websites and articles bookmarked and in many cases articles printed out in hard copy for continuing my deep dive into Project 2025. It is from my perspective clearly and obviously a masterful and concerted effort to bring about a wholesale change to American governance and is most definitely in need of the attention of multiple investigators. For my part I will continue to go exploring deep down into the rabbit hole of Project 2025 and do my best to write something as often as I can cobble together any number of the vast labyrinth’s connections, intersections, and manifestations into some coherent sense.
We the People Must Prevail against, over, and above the menace and scourge of conservative proponents of illiberalism and the pedagogy of its transcendentalist mindsets’ bent on subjecting free people everywhere to their authoritarian, fascistic order.
Robert J. Rei, July 18, 2023
This article’s subject continues at the following post:
Notes:
https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/project-2025
https://www.propublica.org/article/leonard-leo-teneo-videos-documents
https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/09/the-big-money-behind-the-big-lie
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley
Thank you. I would like to hear more when you get it. Meanwhile, I wonder if any of these threads intersect with the white xtian nationalists that are taking over school boards, firing the Superintendents, and installing their own people. It's certainly happening in Temecula, CA. The town is confused and angry.