Conservative Clash: ‘Pro War’ National Review Comes To Blows With Heritage Over ‘Demagoguery’ on Ukraine

The Heritage Foundation and National Review — two traditionally friendly conservative institutions — are in a war of words over their respective positions on Ukraine.

At the direction of President Kevin Roberts, Heritage has taken a turn away from its Reaganite roots, adopting a more nationalistic tone and advocating a more isolationist foreign policy.

According to a report from The Dispatch, the director of its foreign policy center resigned last year after being forced to take down a tweet he posted in support of an aid package to Ukraine. Its tone toward supporters of subsequent aid packages, meanwhile, have become increasingly caustic.

Taking notice of this phenomenon, National Review fellow Dominic Pino responded to a tweet from Heritage purporting to compare the plights and aid provided to the victims of both the war and Maui wildfires.

According to Pino, the comparison — and $900 figure — was “disingenuous.”

“The U.S. spent $39,100 per household on Covid relief, so the government spends far more on domestic emergencies than on foreign ones,” he explained while also noting that it’s domestic programs, not Ukraine aid, that is driving the U.S.’s ever-increasing debt and that some of that spending went back into the U.S. defense industry.

“The Heritage Foundation should be a source of high-quality information that dispels myths about the federal budget. Many of its scholars in the past have been some of Washington’s top leaders on that issue. Many of its reports today still provide quality information on the budget,” wrote Pino, offering half of an olive branch. “But this post and the accompanying effort to demagogue aid to Ukraine do not show Heritage at its best.”

In another column, conservative national security expert John Noonan blasted Heritage for its stance’s resemblance to that of “Bay Area Democrats.”

“It has been a strange twist of fate to see this once mighty pillar of conservative dogma talking like the comments section of the Huffington Post,” he added.

In a reply headlined “Nattering Neocons of Negativity,” Heritage vice president for communications Rob Bluey, who also serves as the executive editor of Heritage’s in-house publication The Daily Signal, responded to critics, including Pino and Noonan.

“In the past few days, pro-war media outlets like National Review and “enlightened experts” have expressed outrage at The Heritage Foundation,” observed Bluey before complaining that it “wrote a total of five articles about Heritage in the span of 24 hours.”

He went on to accuse Pino of supporting aid “because it helps our defense industry and creates jobs here.”

“Government spending for the sake of creating jobs is not a great policy choice, and it ignores what should really be debated: Is expending these resources—without a strategy, with no end in sight, in an environment of corruption—something we can afford? Is it the best use of resources? Should it be packaged with aid to American citizens?” continued Bluey.

Pino penned a rejoinder to Bluey’s broadside noting that Heritage’s own scholars had made some of the same points that he had and to point out that another scholar at Heritage had just resigned because of the company line on Ukraine.

“Without U.S. support, Ukraine is at a much greater risk of being overrun,” wrote Pino. “Russia knows that, which is likely part of the reason why Russian state-controlled news source RT is highlighting Roberts’s opposition to further support. Obviously, Heritage has no control over what RT chooses to cover. But when you’re being highlighted on Russian state media, it should make you think twice.”

Last week’s Republican debate highlighted the divisiveness of Ukraine within the conservative movement, as the hawkish Nikki Haley tangled with a skeptical Vivek Ramaswamy.

“Nikki, I wish you well on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon,” offered a sarcastic Ramaswamy.

“I’m not on the board of Lockheed and Raytheon. You know you’ve put down everyone on this stage, but you want to go and defund Israel, you know what to give Taiwan to China, you want to give Ukraine to Russia,” replied Haley. “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows!”