The US is a democracy. It is also a constitutional republic. There's no conflict between the terms.

The Heritage Foundation is smart enough to realise the EC favours Republicans and therefore the policies it promotes and so will spin anything to make that seems like a good idea, because the will of the people being enacted would work against their goals.

Finally, and more a reply to the parent comment, even a popular vote within a two-party system can be suboptimal in some ways and so be less than an ideal "democracy". Ranked choice voting or similar systems can stop "regulatory capture" of the two main parties from denying the voters a legitimate voice.

Granted we are in fact a constitutional republic, presidents and congress ranging Bush to Obama would have to stop the "make the world safe for democracy" rhetoric as a "meta-reason"(to make up a word) for going to war.

Politicians across the spectrum have either defrauded their people with "democracy" rhetoric, or accepted it as a de facto standard for the modern age. Which one of the two, I'm clearly not possessing of the answers.

Whatever else it means, "republic" doesn't mean minority rule.

That's a Heritage piece (republican think tank, and not even one with a particular philosophical lean: Heritage is a straight ticket republican mouthpiece) written in the days before the 2004 election when it looked like Bush was going to lose the popular vote again like he did in 2000. That's, like, the precise opposite of a measured review of the subject.

Seriously?