Jim DeMint

Conservative Partnership Institute

In 2017, DeMint founded the Conservative Partnership Institute, of which he serves as chairman. The stated purpose of the CPI is the professional development of conservative staffers and elected officials. Mark Meadows joined as senior partner in January 2021. The Save America PAC donated $1 million to the CPI.

A 2022 NPR investigation found CPI might be violating prohibitions on 501(c)(3) charities providing benefits to political parties (in this case, the Republican Party).

2020 election results

As part of the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, DeMint signed a December 10, 2020, letter from the Conservative Action Project asking state legislatures in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Michigan to disregard the popular vote outcomes in each of those states and appoint slates of electors to the Electoral College in support of President Donald Trump.

Foreign policy

In 1999, DeMint voted against the NATO intervention during the Kosovo war. DeMint voted to authorize military force in Iraq in 2002. In 2011, DeMint voted in favor of Rand Paul's resolution opposing military involvement in Libya. He favored preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons over a policy of containment after their development.

DeMint has also expressed concern about various United Nations treaties, such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Law of the Sea Treaty. DeMint favors legal immigration and opposes granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. He has expressed opposition to the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 on the basis that granting amnesty to illegal immigrants may cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars.

In a May 15, 2020, editorial in Newsweek, DeMint stated that while he continued to support free trade, he was wrong about liberalizing trade with China.

Obama administration

In October 2009, after the Honduran Army, on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court, removed Manuel Zelaya as president, DeMint visited the country to gather information. The trip was approved by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell but opposed by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry. DeMint supported the new government, while the Obama administration favored Zelaya's return to the presidency.

In late 2009, DeMint criticized Barack Obama for waiting eight months into his first term as president before nominating a new head of the Transportation Security Administration. After the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253 in December 2009, DeMint stated that President Obama had not put enough focus on terrorism while in office.

DeMint blamed Obama for racism in the United States. He said that Obama "took race back to the '60s, as far as I'm concerned. He made everything a race issue, or at least saw it through a racial lens. The country had moved toward bending over backward to create equality. But then suddenly, with Obama, he just lit the fires. I thought when he was elected that was the big victory, that we had put racism behind us."

Social issues

DeMint opposes abortion in all cases except for when the woman's life is in danger and opposing research from stem cells derived from human embryos.

DeMint voted against the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) in December 2009. He also voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

He voted in favor of declaring English the official language of the US government.

DeMint is firmly opposed to same-sex marriage. In his book Now or Never: Saving America from Economic Collapse, DeMint states:

Does government have the right to reshape cultural mores by redefining religious institutions to sanction behavior that is considered immoral by all the world's religions? In America, people should have a right to live with whomever they want, but redefining marriage to promote behavior that is deemed costly and destructive is not the proper role of government.

DeMint also argues that same-sex marriage infringes upon religious liberty:

We just cannot have, particularly the federal government, redefining marriage or telling us what is right or wrong. And if we help America understand that, folks, we're not trying to get the government to do it our way or your way; what we're asking for is the freedom to allow people to live out their faith and values and their lives the way they want. And we believe that our side will win because I'm convinced that most Americans want to have decent moral lives and share our same values. But if the government continues to press in the wrong direction, it begins to change our culture.

DeMint has repeatedly voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. He has also voted to ban same-sex adoption in Washington, D.C. DeMint drew considerable criticism by saying that openly gay teachers should be banned from teaching in public schools.

In a 2008 interview, DeMint said that while government does not have the right to restrict homosexuality, it also should not encourage it through legalizing same-sex marriage, due to the "costly secondhand consequences" to society from the prevalence of certain diseases among homosexuals. On October 1, 2010, DeMint, in comments that echoed what he had said in 2004, told a rally of his supporters that openly homosexual and unmarried sexually active people should not be teachers. In response, the National Organization for Women, the National Education Association, the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, GOProud (a GOP group), and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force asked for DeMint's apology.