This past March at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Clarke participated in a panel discussion with Pat Nolan, a prominent Washington activist who was once imprisoned, and Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia. Both have been at the forefront of conservative efforts to reduce incarceration through a campaign called Right on Crime. The success of those efforts in traditionally tough states like Texas and Georgia can make change look inevitable.

But, at the conference, Clarke aimed to dispel that notion, telling the audience, “Folks, you’re not being told the truth when it comes to this criminal-justice reform.” Then, as they quibbled over statistics, Clarke said of Nolan: “The gentleman over here says, ‘Figures don’t lie.’ I disagree. I say, ‘Figures lie, and liars figure.’” The audience laughed and cheered. (“He essentially called me a liar, which is stunning,” Nolan told me afterward.)

In closing, Clarke pivoted to an emotional appeal for a more punitive approach to those who sell small amounts of drugs—a crime many conservatives say should not be punished with long prison sentences. “When you live in the ghetto,” Clarke said, “and you’re that single mom, and you’re working your tail off to keep your kid on the straight and narrow … You know you have to send your kid out into that street, and who is the first person he’s going to run into? The dope man. You find relief that we keep these individuals locked up.”

His warm reception at the conservative gathering came after a series of small wins: congressional compromises had watered down efforts both to reduce mandatory minimums and to create more opportunities for early release. Clarke and his allies, like a cadre of senators who defer to the misgivings of prosecutors and FBI officers, are fiercely opposed to any kind of criminal-justice reform. “I think what we’re seeing is sort of The Empire Strikes Back,” says Nolan. “There’s a combination of … people that live off the current system really ferociously fighting back.” Several of Nolan’s Right on Crime associates declined to speak on the record about Clarke: “They probably don’t want to anger someone who is on Fox News all the time.”

The 2016 election season is one reason for the justice-reform backlash, as candidates fortify themselves against attacks that they are soft on crime. Republican front-runner Trump has set a particularly harsh tone, calling lethal injection “too comfortable a way to go.” His onetime challenger, Senator Ted Cruz, once supported shortening federal drug sentences, but now he opposes the idea.

Michael O’Hear, a law professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee who studies Wisconsin polling data, says, “I think this whole presidential campaign has brought out a much broader phenomenon: a divide within the right between political elites and rank-and-file.” This trend has been reflected in dozens of issues, from immigration to abortion to defense, and now it is hitting criminal justice. “A lot of party elites”—Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, the Koch Brothers—“have taken an increasingly skeptical stance towards tough on-crime policies, but that’s not necessarily shared by ordinary Republican voters.”