CPAC Invites Republicans To “Ride the Red Wave,” Apparently Not Realizing That’s Already Very Much a Thing

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is coming up in a few days and you know what that means: It’s time for prominent Republicans and conservative personalities to make absolute fools out of themselves in public.

The conference has a long history of embarrassingly terrible optics, from trotting out a golden statue of Trump to designing a stage “accidentally” shaped like a Nazi symbol to “banning” characters from Sesame Street from the event (as if they would ever have wanted to attend in the first place, plus they’re, you know, fictional).

It’s hard to say CPAC has outdone itself, given those stellar embarrassments, but they’re definitely keeping the tradition alive.

This year, the conference is inviting attendees to “ride the red wave” all the way to their merch store. This is, somehow, an actual shirt they’re selling:

That’s obviously supposed to be the converse of a “blue wave”—the term for an election dominated by Democrat victories. Which would be fine if “red wave” didn’t already have extremely established connotations.

This slogan (and atrocious design illustration) is actually pretty fitting, as CPAC always seems like it would be about as enjoyable as the OG red wave, menstruation. This year is no exception.

The weekend features panels with titles like “Lock Her Up, FOR REAL” and “Are you ready to be called a racist: The courage to run for office.” (I wish I were clever enough to have made either of those up but they are extremely real.)

There will be speeches from Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend (gotta love that nepotism), plus other national embarrassments like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Devin Nunes, and former Hawaii Congressperson and Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who has apparently finally given up pretending she was ever anything but a conservative bigot.

(image: Paramount)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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