Former South Carolina GOP Senator Jim DeMint is coming to Tampa next month. The head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington D.C. based think tank, will be speaking about "Defunding Obamacare and Getting America Back on Track," according to the release sent out by the group last week.
Although a relatively little known senator during his first term in office, DeMint became a rock star of sorts as the Tea Party ascended in the months after President Obama's election in 2008. Although his strong advocacy against the president's push for health care reform ultimately failed in the Senate, his comment that "If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," was certainly a prescient indicator of the GOP mindset against the president's signature domestic achievement, which continues to this day.
Considered to be one of, if not the most conservative member of the Senate while he served there, DeMint once said that he'd rather have a Senate with just 40 rock-ribbed conservatives than 60 moderate Republicans.
[jump]A recent story in Politico elaborated on how some Republicans aren't pleased with the harsh direction that Heritage and its political arm, Heritage Action, have taken against GOP members since DeMint took over in January.
Heritage has also had one major embarrassment under DeMint. That would be its much-disputed study released in May that put the cost of legalizing undocumented immigrants at $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years. Ultimately, one of the co-authors of that report, Jason Richwine, resigned from the foundation after it was learned that in his Harvard dissertation, he argued that Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. have substantially lower IQs than whites.
DeMint will be speaking at the Crowne Plaza Tampa Westshore (5303 W. Kennedy Blvd.) on Wednesday, Aug. 21, at 7 p.m. The event is free, but you must register with the Heritage Foundation.