The presidential race has been decided, but Election 2020 is not over yet. The nation’s eyes now turn to Georgia, where two statewide runoff elections will determine party control of the U.S. Senate.
Republicans need only win one of the two races in order to keep their majority as a check on the anticipated Biden administration. Of the two races, the more unpredictable one is probably the special election for the seat currently held by Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican. Loeffler advanced from the crowded 20-plus-candidate primary to a runoff against Democratic Rev. Raphael Warnock.
In that primary, Warnock presented himself as a centrist — a Democrat suitable for a conservative state like Georgia. He made the runoff by finishing with 33% of the vote.
In the time since, Georgians are getting a clearer picture of Warnock, and it’s not quite the one he’s been trying to project.
An ordained Baptist minister, Warnock has a theological pedigree that most believers in God would consider to be quite radical. Last week, it was reported that he served as a youth minister when his New York City church invited the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to speak in 1995 and then enthusiastically cheered and praised him. Although Warnock was only a junior pastor at the time and did not necessarily make the decision to host and fete that murderous communist, no one has produced evidence that he objected to the lengthy standing ovation Castro received or to his introduction as “the hero of the struggle of peoples around the world.”
The incident at least speaks to Warnock’s judgment and to the radicalism of his ministry. He is no centrist and certainly not someone who can be counted on to speak up when his own allies commit or endorse injustices or even atrocities like the many Castro committed.
Far more troubling is Warnock’s very recent embrace of anti-Israel radicalism. In a 2018 sermon, he portrayed Israel and pro-Israel people in the United States as the cause of the conflict in the Middle East — not the terrorists who have actually caused the problem. He lamented the transfer of the U.S. Embassy to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, and excused anti-Israel terrorist violence, stating, “Yes, there may have been some folk who were violent, but we oughta know how that works out. We know what it’s like to stand up and have a peaceful demonstration and have the media focus on a few violent uprisings.”
This ridiculous statement, just like his church’s earlier praise of Castro, is essentially an exercise in shrugging off murder, so long as the cause is supposedly just. His line of reasoning is popular with the international Marxist Left, which for decades promoted the Palestinian cause alongside the equally murderous causes of Irish and Basque revolutionary terrorists. Incidentally, the Trump administration exposed Warnock’s distorted view earlier this year by brokering peace between Israel and several of the Sunni Arab states once viewed as its archenemies. Israel was never the obstacle.
If that isn’t bad enough, Warnock actively embraced the “God damn America” line of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, going on television to defend Wright in 2008 at the very moment when then-Sen. Barack Obama was wisely disowning him.
There are further concerns about Warnock, who has been accused of dissuading witnesses from immediately cooperating with police in a child abuse case 18 years ago, right when similar problems within the Catholic Church were first coming to light.
Georgians can certainly do better.
