Following a rousing speech at the annual CPAC gathering, John James on Monday stressed the importance of defeating socialism in the United States as Sen. Bernie Sanders gains momentum in the Democratic primary race.

“It’s not just about beating Bernie. It’s about the fact that socialism has an appeal,” the Republican Michigan hopeful for the U.S. Senate told “Fox & Friends.”

James, an Iraq war veteran, went on to say, “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.”

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“Democrats are filling those vacuums with lies, we need to do better,” James said.

Meanwhile, Sanders, I-Vt., two days before Super Tuesday, held two massive rallies on Sunday in delegate-rich California, drumming up enthusiasm before a combined crowd of nearly 25,000 people, the campaign estimated.

More than a third of all delegates are on the line Tuesday, with 14 states and American Samoa holding primaries. Of the roughly 1,350 delegates up for grabs, 415 are from California, which is why Sanders’ campaign is hoping left-wing enthusiasm there can carry them to a big win.

Sanders’ rallies were huge even by his standards and certainly compared with crowds for other candidates. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, rallied a crowd estimated at 2,000 in Houston a day earlier.

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James said that capitalism works, but there is a need to make sure that the barriers to access opportunity are “torn down.”

"You don’t need to go to Venezuela to see where liberal leftist socialist policies have failed their people, 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," said James.

Fox News' Ronn Blitzer contributed to this report.