Andrew Harnik/AP
Even as Donald Trump barrels toward anticipated victories in most of Tuesday’s primaries, a chorus of voices on the right is calling for him to be banned from this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the country’s most prominent gathering of conservatives.
The conservative blog Red State on Monday urged CPAC to disinvite Trump, arguing that by allowing Trump to speak at the conference, CPAC’s leaders “are apparently intent on (further) destroying their own reputations, that of the entire conservative movement, and indeed the Republican Party, and making CPAC more of a laughable farce than it has already become in some people’s eyes.”
At the same time, the minor-league anti-Trump group Make American Awesome launched an online petition urging the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, to bar Trump from the event.
“This Saturday, big government liberal, KKK/David Duke-endorsed Donald Trump will be speaking at CPAC,” the group said in a press release, referring to the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard’s announcement of support for the real estate mogul last week. “This is, in our view, an abomination.”
