Conservatives’ Bernie Sanders lovefest: Why the right has the hots for a prickly socialist

Some Republicans are lapping up news of a Sanders surge -- all the better to ding Hillary Clinton

Republicans for Bernie Sanders? Crazier things have happened in American politics. With the Vermont Senator seeing a rise in Democratic primary polls and growing national media attention, some Republicans are beginning to take notice of the self described democratic socialist.

There is a sub-reddit that asks, “Is it a good thing for conservatives that Bernie Sanders is running for president?” Top Romney strategist, Stuart Stevens, tweeted in early June his prediction that Sanders would beat Clinton in Iowa or New Hampshire and wrote in the Daily Beast, “Bernie Sanders will never be president. But unless Hillary changes her strategy – and soon – he can still wind up toppling her.” Did I mention he worked for Romney’s 2012 campaign?

In any case, much of the conservative talk of Sanders centers around a supposed common enemy — Hillary Clinton. At the conservative American Thinker, one writer said of the Sanders surge, “That sound you hear is Hillary Clinton supporters whistling past the graveyard,” while another wrote “Bernie Sanders sends a chilling message to Hillary campaign.”

Some conservatives have even taken to suggesting that Sanders’ rhetoric is popular because it’s similar to Republicans’ as one conservative commentator wrote in a blog post titled, “Bernie Sanders Says Conservatives Are Right About Unemployment!”:

Conservatives have been saying for years that the real unemployment is way higher than 5.5 or 5.3 percent. Why? Well, a few reasons, the biggest being that more people have simply dropped out of the workforce. It’s not that unemployment is down, it’s that fewer people are even attempting to look for work at all. You can’t fail at something you never even attempt.

Everybody ignored the conservatives and tried to pretend they didn’t exist…

Well, that becomes a little harder, when Bernie Sanders comes out saying the exact same thing. Yes, that Bernie Sanders.

More here: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/09/conservatives_bernie_sanders_lovefest_why_the_right_has_the_hots_for_a_prickly_socialist/