Republicans for Bernie Sanders?

As I write, a few friends are posting pictures with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) (Heritage Action Scorecard 65% and below the Republican average of 68%). I’m not sure that’s a good idea. In academia when we only understand the subject matter 65 percent of the time, we get a “D”.

If Congress chooses Rep. McCarthy as the next Speaker I think we’re going to see more of the likes of Bernie Sanders.

“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”

From where does that timely analysis come? Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848. Those words offer an uncanny insight of the danger to prosperity when our natural rights are encroached by our elites. The farther we proceed down the path of allowing Democrats and faux Republicans to socially engineer our economy, the more we will see the debt-ridden middle class and labor unite behind support for candidates like Bernie Sanders. Just this month and over the pond in Britain we saw Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran of the hard Left of British politics, a man who looks forward to the end of capitalism, rose to become the powerful leader of the Labor Party.

Ideas have consequences.

When the fundamentals of markets are compromised, the machinery of capitalism breaks down. We still call it “capitalism,” but is it? We still see the shiny exterior of a red 1967 Chevrolet Corvette but a look under the hood reveals decades of abuse and deferred maintenance. Where once existed the most prosperous nation in 5,000 years of human history now sits a stagnant economy despite nearly seven years of near zero interest rates and trillions of dollars of quantitative easing (fancy term for printing lots of money). Drive down a typical San Diego street and you will see nice homes with two cars in the driveway but you will not see the consumer debt levels that are tenfold what they were in the 1940s or know that real wages have been flat for decades.

Want to help politicians with the values of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) get elected? Continue to increase poverty by promoting politicians who only uphold limited government and free market values 65 percent of the time. Elect Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House, and elect a man whose proclivity for Jeffersonian values is below average and uninspiring. Go ahead Washington. Send us the message that you can’t hear us and it is business as usual for the Republican Party.

If House Republicans continue to neglect their limited government playbook and fail to use their majorities in both houses to fulfill their role of being a “check and balance” on the executive, the public sector will continue to grow at the expense of the private. More Americans will become unemployed and underemployed and more will become vulnerable to the siren song of Uncle Bernie.

Watching friends in our party innocently post their pictures with McCarthy communicates that the root of our problem is local. It makes it appear we are more enamored of those with whom we are seen than the boring and ordinary machinery of prosperity. Ideas have consequences.

Until our party recommits to treating all men as equals and protecting property, and has leadership which passionately upholds these ideas, there will be no reform. We might as well allow Congress to pass legislation making all future triangles six sided. Until reforms are addressed upholding free markets, issues like immigration and a $19 minimum wage, the likes of what we saw last week in Berkeley will continue to appear and opponents the likes of Bernie Sanders will flourish.

Let’s stop pointing at the other side of the aisle and start looking in the mirror. Reform begins with our house. Reform begins with me. No McCarthys. No Sanders. One is a reaction to the other.

Eric Andersen is a member of the San Diego County Republican Party Central Committee and is the Co-Founder of the Republican Liberty Caucus of San Diego County and im2moro.com. In 2012 he was the Rock Church Citizen of the Year. He holds other crazy ideas like all men are created equal and believes in life, liberty and justice for all.