J.D. Vance Is Right: The Conservative Movement Doesn’t Need a Purity Test
The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker has declared that the battle over the Heritage Foundation is a “struggle of good against evil.” He warns that Vice President J.D. Vance, along with other conservatives who dismiss the infighting on the right, are “making a mistake.”
Baker’s column, “Vance, Heritage and the Case for Conservative Infighting,” paints the Heritage Foundation’s internal turmoil as a moral test of the right’s soul. The drama began when Heritage president Kevin Roberts refused to distance himself from Tucker Carlson, who was recently accused of sympathizing with far-right figure Nick Fuentes.
Baker describes Roberts’ defense of Carlson as a betrayal of principle, claiming it led to “a free fall” at Heritage, with senior fellows resigning in protest.
Yet what Baker calls a moral crisis looks more like an institutional panic from the conservative establishment — one that cannot accept the populist realignment reshaping the movement. Heritage, once the intellectual fortress of Reagan-era conservatism, is being forced to confront the new reality: the base has changed, and so has the conversation.
But let’s pause for a moment. If every disagreement inside the conservative movement is now a cosmic showdown between good and evil, then we’ve truly entered the age of hysteria, not moral clarity.
For Baker, Carlson, Vance, Owens, and others, are dangerous, “weird,” and conspiratorial. For millions of ordinary Americans, they are the only voices willing to question the failures of the bipartisan elite.
The establishment right, embodied by institutions like Heritage and The Wall Street Journal, prefers polite debates about marginal tax rates while ignoring the cultural and economic rot hollowing out middle America.
J.D. Vance understands something the old guard still refuses to see: the Republican Party is no longer the club of Chamber of Commerce donors and think-tank consultants. It’s the party of working families, veterans, small-town business owners, and disillusioned independents who’ve watched Washington sell them out for decades.
When Vance calls infighting “stupid,” he’s rejecting vanity wars that distract from the real enemy: the progressive machine that dominates government, media, and corporate power.
Gerard Baker is a serious journalist, and his career deserves respect. But framing the Heritage drama as “good versus evil” is nothing but moral theater.
Baker accuses Roberts and Vance of enabling antisemitism by refusing to condemn Carlson’s every controversial statement. Yet, in the same breath, he admits that such figures have massive influence on the right. Why? Because they speak to frustrations the establishment has ignored: about foreign wars, about censorship, about an economy rigged for the powerful. It’s easier to denounce Tucker Carlson as a heretic than to confront the failures that made his message resonate.
No one on the mainstream right defends hatred or antisemitism. But disagreement is not endorsement, and refusing to participate in public shaming rituals does not make someone morally suspect. The Heritage Foundation’s current turmoil it’s the overdue beginning of a generational reset.
For years, Heritage functioned as a policy factory for Republican politicians who talked small government but delivered corporate welfare and endless wars. Under Roberts, the organization has started asking uncomfortable questions about the role of globalism, the cost of interventionism, and the erosion of national identity.
To Baker and the WSJ editorial board, this is heresy. To J.D. Vance and millions of voters, it’s the rebirth of a conservative movement that actually represents them.
Baker’s article spends much of its space warning about the “growing antisemitism” fueled by populist rhetoric. No serious conservative denies that antisemitism is evil and dangerous. But Baker conflates legitimate criticism of foreign policy, elite influence, or global institutions with bigotry itself.
This tactic, branding dissent as moral failure, is precisely what alienates ordinary conservatives from the legacy media and their institutional allies.
Figures like Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America or Rabbi Yaakov Menken, who resigned from Heritage’s antisemitism task force, have every right to voice concern. But calling for the firing of Kevin Roberts because he refused to join a public condemnation campaign is extreme. It transforms moral conviction into ideological policing.
J.D. Vance’s refusal to indulge in “infighting” is pure realism. He knows that the American right is entering a new phase of transformation, and the enemies of that transformation will use every scandal, real or manufactured, to stop it.
The conservative movement today faces far greater threats than Tucker Carlson’s choice of interview guests. We face a government willing to censor dissent, a Justice Department targeting political opponents, and a media establishment that conflates patriotism with extremism.
If the Wall Street Journal wants to moralize about “good and evil,” it might start by asking why the most powerful institutions in America are systematically silencing one half of the country.
Gerard Baker’s critique will earn applause in Manhattan and Brussels, but it misunderstands what’s happening in the heartland. The populist right is, in fact, consolidating. The online noise, the think-tank resignations, the elite discomfort…these are birth pains, not death throes.
J.D. Vance’s message is to stop fighting shadows, start fighting for people. That doesn’t mean ignoring moral questions; it means refusing to turn every policy disagreement into a crusade.
The new right will have its fringe voices, as every movement does. But the future of American conservatism won’t be decided by purity tests at the Heritage Foundation. It will be decided by whether conservatives can still build a movement grounded in truth, courage, and loyalty to ordinary Americans, not to the insecurities of the ruling class.
The establishment can cry “infighting” or “moral collapse” all it wants. The real divide is between those who still believe in the old illusions of respectability and those who believe the country deserves something real.
J.D. Vance is right: the conservative movement doesn’t need another round of finger-pointing. It needs conviction and the courage to stop apologizing for existing.
By I. Constantin
