If you make a list of the most horrible things that have happened in the US in the last 50 years, a stunning number of them can be traced back to the Heritage Foundation, trickle-down economics, wars in the Middle East, the rise of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and much more. Currently, they detest the US government and produce an endless stream of anti-government propaganda. They are currently using Project 25, which will change the nature of the US government to an authoritarian (fascist) one.

To understand how destructive they are we need to look at its founders Edwin John Feulner Jr, Joseph Coors, and Paul Weyrich. Feulner actively ran the place during much of its existence, Coors financed it, and provided much of its philosophical underpinnings. Weyrich has been tremendously influential and is often singled out as the person that politicised evangelicals. The US is struggling to survive the damage he caused.

Weyrich cofounded other organizations that have been dedicated to ending democracy in the US, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Moral Majority are two. ALEC, like the Heritage Foundation, is dedicated to rewriting the Constitution to favor corporations and the wealthy, and deserves a blog entry on its own. 

It was clear what Weyrich thought of democracy; speaking to a group of preachers, he said: 

Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now.
As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

Weyrich was right. Young people, people of color, and women are much more likely to vote Democratic, and Republicans are far more likely to be Christians. That is why Republicans are making a concerted effort to Democrats from voting.