Editors at National Review Online assess Edwin Feulner’s key role in the American conservative movement.
He entered Washington as a think-tank staffer, then became an adviser to Melvin Laird, first when Laird was a member of the House of Representatives, then when he became secretary of defense. Feulner helped congressional Republicans organize the Republican Study Committee as a committed conservative counterpart to the Democratic Study Group and served as its executive chairman.
Feulner’s institution-building went far beyond the Hill, however. He, William F. Buckley Jr., Don Lipsett (then in ISI’s leadership), Frank Meyer, and other movement leaders discussed the need for a kind of intellectual clearinghouse for their ranks. Out of their conversations and planning arose the Philadelphia Society in 1964. In the 1970s, still feeling under-resourced compared with the left, Feulner and Paul Weyrich began formulating what launched in 1973 as the Heritage Foundation. Feulner became its president in 1977, serving in that role until 2013, and then again in 2017–18. Under his tenure, it became the premier conservative think tank in Washington.
Perhaps its signal achievement came in 1980. As Heritage president, Feulner spearheaded one of the most successful implementations of conservative thought into policy by releasing the Mandate for Leadership. The product of extensive collaboration with conservative thinkers and activists across the country, the Mandate for Leadership was intended as a practical framework for the incoming Ronald Reagan administration. It functioned as intended. More than 60 percent of its guidelines became reality by the end of Reagan’s presidency. Not for nothing did Reagan award Feulner the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989.
His accomplishments in other areas also deserve attention. Beyond Washington, he played significant roles in starting the American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network, both of which remain essential incubators of conservative policy at the state and local levels.
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Author: Mitch Kokai
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