National Review put up a piece up on Thursday about the Heritage Foundation’s effort to defeat the immigration bill backed by the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight. The author, Betsy Woodruff, explains that the dawn of the Obama era forced what had been a stodgy think tank to change its tactics:

During the debate over the president’s health-care reform, representatives of the Heritage Foundation felt their hands were tied by their 501(c)(3) status. Lobbyists simply had more tools and, as a result, were often more influential. So the conservative giant decided to branch out and start Heritage Action. Think of it as the Heritage Foundation with teeth. “Before—three, four years ago—we would have been reluctant to do that,” says Tripp Baird, the group’s senior legislative strategist, of its tussling with Republicans over the farm bill. “We would have said, ‘Well, they’ve done some good things here, we don’t like it that much, but all in all it’s a good bill.’ But if it’s got gimmicks that we’ve been blasting the left and center on for years, and Republicans are using the same kind of gimmicks, we’ve got to say something, and we’ve got to say it hard.”

In May, I covered Heritage’s dramatic transformation from a quasi-academic institution to a political-pressure group. Afterward, while I was reporting a piece about the Gang of Eight negotiations, Heritage and its tactics repeatedly came up in interviews with Republican senators. In the article, I quote John McCain taking delight in how a Heritage report about the costs of legalizing currently undocumented immigrants became an embarrassment when the Washington Post reported that one of the authors of the report had previously suggested discouraging the immigration of Hispanics on the supposed basis of their intelligence:

McCain could hardly contain himself as he recited the story of how the Heritage report backfired. “Ka-boom!” he yelled. “That was a gift from God.” Heritage’s longtime president, Edwin J. Feulner, recently retired and was replaced by Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator and a leader of the Tea Party movement. McCain argued that Heritage, one of the most important institutions in the history of American conservatism, had marginalized itself.

Not all of McCain’s comments about Heritage made it into the final version of the piece. However, political observers might be interested in the full context of what he said. Here’s a transcript of our exchange about Heritage:

MCCAIN: We learned a lesson from 2007, too. You’ve got to preëmpt this kind of stuff. I’m not trying to criticize DeMint. But DeMint, the head of the Heritage Foundation, is well known to be anti-immigration-reform. That was a well-known factor. And the guy that used to be the head, Feulner, had kind of a credibility level. He had never, in other words, he wasn’t known— BRIAN ROGERS (McCain’s communications director): Heritage used to kind of be better on immigration. MCCAIN: It wasn’t that they were so much better, it’s that Feulner was viewed kind of as an academic, in other words, a non-political guy. LIZZA: My view is that Heritage has turned from an academic think tank to a populist grassroots pressure group. MCCAIN: They have clearly changed. They have clearly changed. Their reputation—you used to mention it in the same breath as A.E.I. [the American Enterprise Institute] and a couple other right-of-center [think tanks]. Now you don’t. You may disagree with A.E.I., but A.E.I. has great credibility, just like Brookings, to the left of center, has great credibility. Those two are kind of mirror opposites of each other. Brookings comes out with a study, we pay attention. A.E.I. comes out with a study, we pay attention. Now Heritage just doesn’t have the credibility.

Heritage’s gamble is that, while it may have lessened its credibility as a think tank, it has increased its effectiveness in politics over-all. So far, it’s failed spectacularly at influencing the debate in the Senate. But the group does have more sway with House Republicans, and that’s where immigration reform is headed now.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP.