John James, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, warned Monday that Democrats were taking advantage of his party’s failure to connect with voters on economic issues.
“We as a Republicans haven’t done a good job going into our inner cities and going into our campuses and showing how conscientious capitalism, how compassionate conservatism works for Americans,” James said Monday on Fox & Friends. “Democrats are filling those vacuums with lies. We need to do better.”
James, a combat veteran who is running against Democrat Gary Peters, hopes to become the second Republican African American in the Senate. He mentioned Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as an example of a prominent socialist whose ideas could destroy traditional conservative values.
“It’s not just about beating Bernie,” James said of the 2020 election. “It’s about the fact that socialism has an appeal.”
Sanders broke out as the Democratic Party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination following key wins in New Hampshire and Nevada. A win in the South Carolina primary by former Vice President Joe Biden over the weekend closed the gap.
James gave a speech during the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.
“We must show them an America where the son of a slave can become a sharecropper, the son of a sharecropper can become a mason, the son of a mason can become a truck driver, and the son of that truck driver can stand before you here today on the brink of becoming Michigan’s first black U.S. senator,” he said.
James said voters need not look at foreign countries to gain a solid understanding of what a left-wing political ideology can do to American governments, even at a local level.
“You don’t need to go to Venezuela to see where liberal leftist socialist policies have failed their people,” he said. “You can just come to Michigan and see where we’re failing our neighborhoods, where we’re forgetting our farms, and where we need to make sure that we have situations that we don’t have policies of envy and confiscation but we have policies that increase access and opportunity for all people.”
