Rep. Dan Crenshaw really seems to make certain kinds of people mad. Al Qaeda, SNL, Never Trumpers on the Far Left and the Alt Right. And assorted others eager to slot him into whatever their agenda may be.

Here’s Saagar Enjeti warning that Rep. Crenshaw will doom the GOP. Really.

Saagar Enjeti: Crenshaw’s conservatism will doom future of GOP – The Hill

Certainly this broad assessment is based on a thorough evaluation of Rep. Crenshaw’s record, votes, and political philosophy? Nah.

That fear was realized earlier this weekend when GOP rising star Dan Crenshaw tweeted: “In 2020 remember this, Republicans are the party of Uber, Democrats are the party of taxi cab unions. Own your own labor, work where you want, and how you want. Embrace innovation. that’s conservatism.”

Okay and? Do we want to be the party of taxi cab unions and medallion owners. Aren’t we the party of people who want to be able to earn some money on the side without having to join a union? 

Crenshaw conservatism will doom the GOP to major losses in future elections and more importantly it betrays the very reason that so many untold millions were willing to give Donald Trump a chance at the Oval Office in the first place. Let’s ignore the fact that Crenshaw is holding up a company that loses billions of dollars a year as the face of American conservatism and go a little bit deeper to see actually why it’s so problematic.

Crenshaw is actually holding up the ability to work without having to pay into a Democrat political operation. That’s the obvious point here. I also don’t see a simplistic applause line on Twitter embodying whatever “Crenshaw conservatism” is supposed to be.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Oren Cass quickly pointed out after Crenshaw’s tweet that calling your opponents the party of uber would be a truly low blow given that it provides unstable, poorly paid, part-time work that is not a stepping stone to anything and almost never can support a family.

I’ve spoken to plenty of Uber drivers who would disagree. Some hate the company. Most find the money they earn useful. Some do it full time. Most use it for part time income.

Uber is not meant to replace a full-time job. The gig economy can’t replace the conventional economy. But it’s a stepping stone. And, for some, an important one. 

Anyway, I’m not sure the policy director for the Romney 2012 campaign is really the guy to use as your source while accusing Rep. Crenshaw of being another Paul Ryan. 

Again Crenshaw misses the mark. Yes, Uber represents a major technological innovation but from an economic perspective it basically represents eliminating the obligations of employer employee relations, and makes any sort of competition with an entity that actually needs to balance its books impossible, not to mention the epidemic of rising suicides amongst their own drivers.

Those are legitimate leftist, not conservative, critiques of Uber.

California addressed them with AB5, a disaster that has split Uber drivers and is set to wipe out freelance journalists in California. It was premised on the idea that companies should be forced to treat independent contractors as employees, whether either party likes it or not.

Is this supposed to be the future of conservatism?

And as Cass again masterfully points out, Uber’s entire case is that the drivers don’t actually work for them! And saying that is only slightly less embarrassing for the Congressman than the effort to revive a position discredited 100 years ago, that individual low wage workers have market power to dictate terms and conditions of employment.

I would ask “discredited by whom”, but why bother. Individual low wage workers are helpless pawns who require the protection of unions and governments. Is this the future of conservatism?

For many years Crenshaw conservatives told us that neoliberal trade policy, corporate tax cuts, bank bailouts, and celebrating companies like Uber were how you both preserve, protect, and expand the everyday quality of life for Americans

Rep. Crenshaw is now being blamed for bank bailouts and neoliberal trade policy? Pretty sure he was fighting a war back then.

This strawman argument assumes that there are only two extremes. You can let people choose to work part time without letting corporations control domestic economic policy.

 We know how it all worked out, the hollowing out of the American middle class, skyrocketing costs for needs of American life, crippling debt, declining birth rates, declining life expectancy, a historic opioid epidemic, and record high suicide rates.

Again, a legitimate leftist critique that assumes that the collapse of the American way of life was entirely due to income inequality. The problem with the Left (one of many) is that its materialistic focus actually prevents it from understanding that economic issues are downstream from values.

A point that Saagar Enjet references and then drops.

As author Chris Arnade excellently said this weekend, I still cannot believe there’s anyone alive who doesn’t understand that focusing only on the things that can be measured while ignoring and destroying those that can’t, like the value of faith, place, family, and community is our problem.

It wasn’t bank bailouts that led to the opiod epidemic. That’s a simplistic leftist reading. It was the loss of faith and family, of meaning and values, that did. When people see no reason to go on, they don’t. 

The GOP’s singular focus from this point should be to orient all domestic and foreign policy towards a single goal, easing the ability to make enough money and have reasonable costs to start a bountiful family in the place of your choosing.

And that’s the end. No explanation of how. The devil in such matters is in the details.

There are things that the government can legitimately do, cut taxes for actual working families, there are things it can do with trade policy, with immigration limits, with buying domestic products, etc to help. It can use anti-trust laws to break up some monopolies and clear space in the forest so it’s more of a free market. But the straight line approach is socialism. And we know how the proposals coming from Sanders or Warren would work out in the real world.

Call it “Crenshaw Conservatism”, but the government isn’t very good at doing these things. People are. And if they can’t do them, government can’t do it for them. And when it tries, they lose the ability to do anything.

The American economy worked really well when we had a smaller government, lower tax burdens, and treated the economy as a national interest. Every reform proposal is aimed at getting us back there. Not at creating subsidized jobs and a planned economy that assumes that our national malaise will be fixed with handouts. Go look at how well that worked out in Detroit and Newark. That would doom the future of the GOP. And America.