With college students, grassroots activists, and journalists flocking to the conference, the Conservative Political Action Conference is a time for the conservative movement to put its best foot forward. There’s no question this year, and every year, the conference will provide many worthy conservatives a platform to advance their ideas and showcase the movement’s top talent — and from a broad spectrum of right-of-center thought.
But giving former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. a platform isn’t helping that cause.
Just two days before CPAC was set to kick off, Clarke advanced the conspiracy theory that Florida students advocating for gun control in the wake of last week’s mass shooting were acting as part of an organized campaign with “George Soros’ fingerprints all over it.”
In late December, Clarke suggested the “antidote” to fake news pushed by the “lying lib media” is to “punch them in the nose & MAKE THEM TASTE THEIR OWN BLOOD.” What his delivery lacks in prudence, it makes up for in enthusiasm!
Clarke has directly compared former President Barack Obama’s policing policies to Hitler, and mocked Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett for getting beaten in his efforts to protect a woman and her one-year-old granddaughter from an attack.
Last spring, conservative columnist Christian Schneider reminded readers in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that, indeed, “at one point, [Clarke] was a serious person with serious ideas.” But he’s come a long way.
The Left often argues against its own caricature of conservatism, depicting the movement as one hopelessly mired in conspiracy theories, inclined to incite violence against the press, and more enabling of hyperbolic punditry than serious thinking.
Why are we making that task easier?
