https://youtube.com/watch?v=9AOORCtJb2Y
Jim DeMint pushed back at the suggestion that he’s been meddling in Republican primaries and pushing to replace congressional leadership with more conservative legislators or push certain legislative strategies. “Really, at the Heritage Foundation, we’re not involved, with candidates and elections, what goes on internally,” he told CBS’s Bob Schieffer.
DeMint said his work at the Heritage Foundation is concerned with trying to unite Americans behind “a set of ideas,” and that “we’re less involved with really trying to cram anything down the throats of Congress and the senators.”
When asked about the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group DeMint founded that has spent a significant amount of money supporting primary challengers to Republican senators, he said, ”I’m proud of what the Senate Conservatives Fund has done, but I haven’t been involved with that in over two years, so I’m really not familiar with what they’re doing this election cycle.”
When Schieffer pointed out that a number of DeMint’s close associates run the SCF, the former senator said, “They’re not my people – they’re their own people, and they’re supported by folks all over the country.”
“I’m not involved with any political group right now,” DeMint said.
DeMint said that he felt conservatives aren’t well represented in Washington, but earlier in the segment, he declined to criticize Republican leadership over their decision to acquiesce to raising the debt limit this past week, saying that they had recognized the president would have taken the opportunity to blame any resultant crisis on Republicans anyway.