Vice President Mike Pence took aim at the 2020 Democratic field Wednesday, saying Tuesday’s presidential primary debate wasn’t a battle of ideas between moderates and liberals, but between “liberals and socialists.”
After the first round of the Democratic debates on CNN, pundits noted clashes between more moderate Democrats such as former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, which have publicly criticized socialism, and progressives such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“Today headlines across the country say that the story last night was that moderates in the Democratic party were pushing back in the debate. It’s pretty amazing was the media calls ‘moderate’ these days. Last night’s Democratic debate wasn’t between moderates and liberals. It was between liberals and socialists,” the vice president said Wednesday at a student conservative conference hosted by Young America’s Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Pence pointed to agreement among candidates on decriminalizing illegal immigration, the Green New Deal, gun control, and abortion.
“As we saw in last night’s debate, before the first hour was over, leading Democrats advocated a government takeover of healthcare, open borders, free healthcare to illegal immigrants, and raising taxes on the middle class to pay for it,” he said.
The audience booed those ideas, but applauded Pence for juxtaposing socialism with principles of freedom.
“But it is freedom, not socialism, that gave us the strongest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world. It was freedom, not socialism, that ended slavery, won two world wars, and stands today as a beacon of hope for all the world,” the vice president said.
The second round of Democratic primary debates continues tonight.
