Why Shouldn’t Al Sharpton and Rand Paul Have Breakfast Together?

Last week Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
had breakfast with the Rev. Al Sharpton, at Sharpton’s request.
The meeting appears to have been productive for both parties.
Sharpton obviously isn’t likely to back Paul for president, but
he’s taking the opportunity to
put pressure on Hillary Clinton on various civil rights issues
where Paul’s talk has been bolder than Clinton’s. Paul in turn can
build up his civil rights image a little without sanctioning

any of
ugliness in Sharpton’s past. Put differently, both men get the
advantages of a meeting without the disadvantages of an
endorsement.

Naturally, Paul’s critics are treating this as an endorsement
anyway. Jennifer Rubin, a medium who channels neoconservative
opinion for The Washington Post, put on her
concern-troll hat yesterday and wrote this:

Why is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) courting Sharpton and
why don’t Republicans denounce him for doing so, just as they do
Democrats?…If Paul wants to take on criminal justice reform,
more power to him. And if he thinks this will boost him with
African American voters, he won’t be the first pol to try to pick
agenda items that impress slices of the electorate. But in doing
precisely what the administration and so many liberals do—treating
Al Sharpton as a respected and important figure—he does his own
credibility harm.

Somehow I have a hard time imagining Rubin reacting this way if
Paul had broken bread with Dick Cheney or Sheldon Adelson.

My view? A movement to roll back mass incarceration,
overcriminalization, and police militarization is more likely to
succeed if it has support on both the left and the right. Sharpton
has influence on the left, Paul has influence on the right, and
both are open to cooperation. The sane question to ask here isn’t
whether either one of them is a good guy; it’s whether their
meeting can actually contribute to that movement in a significant
way.

I’m not sure it will. It’s just a breakfast, after all. But I
can’t imagine how refusing to meet would have helped any
of those causes.