Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock confirmed centrists’ and conservatives’ worst fears during Sunday evening’s debate against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler: namely, that he supports policies much closer to the far Left than the center.
Warnock, who is running against Loeffler during one of Georgia’s critical Senate runoff elections in January, refused to answer important questions about his past and about policies he would support if he were elected. Most notably, he refused to say whether he’d support the Left’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court if Democrats were to take the Senate, and he refused to denounce socialism when asked to do so by Loeffler.
With regard to court-packing, Warnock was asked twice whether he would support adding more justices to the bench. Both times, he refused to even address the question, deflecting to a different talking point about Loeffler’s voting record each time.
“As I move all across the state, people aren’t asking me about the courts and whether we should expand the courts,” Warnock said. “I know that’s an interesting question for people inside the Beltway to discuss, but they’re wondering when in the world are they going to get some COVID-19 relief?”
The moderator pressed Warnock: “But it will impact people on the ground, so I am wondering if you can answer the question. Do you support expanding the Supreme Court?”
To which Warnock replied: “I’m really not focused on it, and I think that, too often, the politics in Washington has been about the politicians.”
And when confronted by Loeffler about his past support for Marxist policies and asked whether he would “renounce socialism and Marxism” once and for all, Warnock didn’t even try to give a straight answer.
“Listen, I believe in our free enterprise system, and my dad was a small-business owner,” he said. “During the Great Recession, you know what I was doing? I was leading my church to build a community center, where, among other things, we had a financial literacy center that taught people how to repair their credit, create a 700 credit score community, how to create a business, how to buy a home, how to participate in our free enterprise system.”
Warnock also struggled to distance himself from the “defund the police” movement, to which Loeffler has tied him due to his critical comments about law enforcement. In particular, Warnock referred to police officers as “gangsters” and “thugs” in 2015, a point to which Loeffler referred back successfully. Warnock did not apologize for these remarks, nor did he explain why he made them. He could not even make the basic distinction between reasonable law enforcement reform, which a majority of voters support, and radical approaches such as “defund the police.”
All in all, Warnock failed to convince Georgians that he is not the “radical liberal” Loeffler has made him out to be. She successfully tied him to the Democratic Party’s far Left circles, and he didn’t really try to stop her. Perhaps that’s because he knows his record speaks for itself, and it’s impossible now for him to hide from it.
