Roger Severino, writing for the Heritage Foundation in a letter to The Wall Street Journal‘s New Year Day Letters section, demurred from the WSJ house editorial regarding the putative blowup at/of Heritage. He claimed a mistake[ of] a change in tactics for a change in principles.

The disagreement between the two centers on a Tucker Carlson podcast interview of Nick Fuentes and the Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ defense of Carlson and of the interview in the ensuing hooraw over the interview and Fuentes.

Kevin Roberts, the head of the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, defended Carlson after the episode, saying Carlson “remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

It’s entirely appropriate—consistent, even, with Conservative thought on free speech—to defend the interview in its existence and to defend Carlson for doing the interview. However, for an allegedly conservative organization to defend the existence of an interview between a conspiracy theory mongerer and a racist bigot without comment is badly wrong.

Such an interview should be accompanied, with or in its immediate aftermath, commentary on the immorality of the bigotry and on the foolishness of conspiracy mongering. That the Heritage Foundation chose to defend the interview and interviewer without comment belies Severino’s pious claims of continued Conservatism.