Oh, no, I'm a good ranter! Just a very bad think tank director.

Jim Demint at the Heritage Foundation seems increasingly intent on founding a personality cult over there, as he ditches more and more of the old shop's "ideas" (imitation, no doubt, but the conservatives found them comfy) in favor of simple expressions of inchoate terror (basically, "Obama gonna get you ef you don't watch out") and spite. Today at the Foundry he appears in a video of the speech he gave at the Value Voters Summit a week ago (that's how long it's been available online, too, and I'd imagine everybody that wants to watch it has had plenty of opportunity by now), with a teaser signed by the obviously fictional "Crystal Goodremote" announcing the speech without giving the date, as if to suggest that it might be brand new:

Freedom means that people should be able to make their own decisions, but that freedom is not achievable when government forces values upon its people, said Heritage President Jim DeMint at the Values Voter Summit.

“As we cringe at what’s going on in Washington today, particularly with Obamacare, it should remind us that every time Washington tries to control another part of our lives it creates division and diminishes the love that Americans have for our country,” DeMint said.

It strikes me as possible that the entire staff may have quit (presumably they all want health insurance) and he's running the whole show by himself, like Frank Morgan as Oz the Great and Terrible serving as his own sentry, coachman, doorman, and disembodied head.

The audience he now aims at is well represented by the lone commenter at the post, who calls himself "Bobbie":

It's such a waste of the human mind when everyone has their own that learns from each other without any need for government people to control/influence/encourage or discourage. People are tolerant of each other where this government of people promotes zero as their activist controlled media shows seething desperation to convince what is acceptable be taken offensively and insultingly. Where do they get off?

Indeed. I think I'm getting off right here. Please don't take it offensively or insultingly, I just feel this sudden need to be alone.