The Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference often lures a who’s who of GOP power players to Michigan. Wealthy donors shake hands with presidential candidates, who give rousing speeches to packed audiences in hopes of winning the conference’s straw poll.
The event is typically a money-maker for its sponsor – the Michigan Republican Party – helping to fund get-out-the-vote efforts and support campaigns to get Republicans elected throughout the state.
But this year’s conference was decidedly different.
The only presidential candidate to show up was Vivek Ramaswamy, who was mostly polling in the single digits. The line-up of speakers included failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake; Zuby, a British rapper who occasionally appears on Fox News; and, conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza, who ultimately did not show up.
The biggest draw was actor Jim Caviezel, a promoter of QAnon conspiracy theories, who had a hit movie this summer but is perhaps best known for playing Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ” movie 20 years ago. He was paid a $110,000 fee to attend and give a 25-minute speech.
The event, simply put, was “a disaster,” said Warren Carpenter, an active party member and former district chair.
To go deeper, this is a very fictionalized account of a “save the children” agent that has stated that he goes across the world and saves children from trafficing.
Of course, in typical GOP fashion, it come out that sexually harassed and abused often married coworkers, via unsolicited nudes and by coercing having ti have sex with him on “missions” as a “cover.”
Also, the “child saving” was often a group of heaviky armed white men descending into a deeply poor and rural town flashing thousands of dollars to have young children brought to them, and its a point of contention that this might have generated new trafficking, not stopped it. The claims made about freed or saved people from the founder generally have no evidence or collaboration from anyone else, even the people saved.
He has since been ousted by his charity, and started a new one while denying all claims.