Kevin D. Roberts
Heritage Foundation president since October 2021; former Texas Public Policy Foundation president (2016-2021); co-author of the 79 Days Report (October 2020); author of Project 2025’s introduction; volunteered for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign as a high schooler; NatCon 3 speech declaring Heritage “already part of” the National Conservative movement
Who He Is
Kevin Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation and the figure whose 2022 NatCon speech formalized the institutional takeover of establishment conservatism by the MAGA New Right. He is not primarily an intellectual — he is an operator and movement builder. His significance lies in what his appointment to Heritage’s leadership, and what his public statements, reveal about where the conservative institutional infrastructure has gone.
Background
Roberts volunteered for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign as a high schooler — a detail he offered from the stage at NatCon 3 to signal his longstanding nationalist sympathies: “my people knew what time it was in America before most even knew the clock was ticking.”
He became president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in 2016, where he worked with Ryan Williams (Claremont Institute president) and others, including John Eastman and Kevin Roberts (no relation), to co-author the 79 Days Report (October 2020) — the Claremont/TPPF pre-election wargame document that a critic called “a bowdlerized retelling of The Turner Diaries.”
Heritage Foundation President (October 2021)
Roberts was named Heritage president in October 2021, replacing Kay Cole James and Kim Holmes, who had both retired in March 2021. His appointment signaled that Heritage’s board had decided Trump-style right-wing Populism was the future of American conservatism.
NatCon 3 Speech (Miami, September 2022)
Roberts’s speech at NatCon 3 in Miami was a formal ceremony of establishment conservatism’s capitulation to the New Right. He thanked Yoram Hazony for his wise counsel in his early Heritage days and credited Christopher DeMuth for suggesting he “give National Conservatism a chance.” He then pledged:
“I come to this convention as president of the Heritage Foundation to extend my gratitude for the ideas and energy National Conservatives have injected into the national debate and my fellowship with the principles you advanced to rescue America from the barbarians inside the gates of our very own institutions. I come not to invite the National conservatives to join our conservative movement but to acknowledge the plain truth that Heritage is already part of yours.”
Project 2025
Roberts’s introduction to Project 2025 — Heritage’s 900+ page governing blueprint for a second Trump administration — was described by historian Thomas Zimmer as “oozing the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge that is fueling the Right.” Roberts wrote of the “long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions,” called “The Great Awokening” a totalitarian cult, and promised: “We have two years and one chance to get it right.”
See Heritage Foundation for details of the Project 2025 agenda.
Cross-References
- Heritage Foundation — the institution he leads
- National Conservatism — the movement he formally joined Heritage to
- John Eastman — co-author of the 79 Days Report
- Claremont Institute — institutional partner; 79 Days Report co-authors
- Longmarcherism — the ideology his Project 2025 introduction embodies
- Pat Buchanan — his political origin story
- MAGA New Right — the movement whose institutional capture Roberts represents