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MARIETTA, Georgia (AP) – Socialists. Radical extremists. Marxists.
These exaggerated cartoons of Democrats are the Republicans’ opening arguments as they attempt to protect the two U.S. senators from Georgia who face serious challenges in the Jan. 5 run-off that will determine which party controls the chamber at the start of the president-elect Joe. Biden’s Democratic Administration.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio led the charge on Wednesday, campaigning in suburban Atlanta alongside Senator Kelly Loeffler and warning that defeats for her and fellow Georgia countryman David Perdue would hand the US government back to “radical elements.” “.
Loeffler went so far as to assert, without supporting details, that her Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock has “a Marxist ideology”. Loeffler asked no questions after the event that filled the Cobb County Republican Party seat with hundreds of enthusiastic voters, many of whom wear masks as cases of the coronavirus increase across the country.
Warnock’s campaign was pushed back, noting that the Democrat’s political preferences are squarely within the American political mainstream. Terrence Clark, a Warnock aide, said Loeffler was trying to “scare the Georgians” while “twisting” Warnock’s candidacy and obscuring his own record.
It’s a familiar trope for Republicans to criticize Democrats, especially in traditionally GOP-oriented states, as being “too liberal” or even “socialist.” But the vehemence to open a two-month blitz underscores the national stakes of the unusual twin Senate contests in Georgia and the Republicans’ heavy focus on major supporters for a run-off ballot.
The arguments come as Loeffler, Perdue and other Georgia Republicans continue to suggest that the November 3 election – overseen by a Republican secretary of state – was riddled with voting irregularities and tabulation errors, assertions made without proof but which animate a GOP base still loyal to the president. Donald Trump even after his national defeat.
“The turnout takes care of itself when the presidential race is on the ballot, so it can still boil down to persuasion in the middle,” said Republican consultant Chip Lake, a senior adviser on the ballot. unsuccessful offer from Representative Doug Collins against Loeffler.
“Second, it’s not a question of persuasion anymore,” Lake continued. “These are the basics.”
Collins, who is now leading Trump’s recount efforts in Georgia, said the goal was to keep Republicans “excited because they don’t want to see our country turn to a liberal perspective.”
Republicans and Democrats are bracing for an unprecedented nationwide campaign in Georgia, a new bipartisan battlefield where a record turnout of around 5 million people is almost evenly distributed. Biden leads Trump by around 14,000 votes, but Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Wednesday announced plans for an audit with a manual count of the ballots before certifying the results.
Perdue, a staunch Trump ally first elected in 2014, led Democrat Jon Ossoff but broke Georgia’s majority law for victory. Loeffler, named after Republican Senator Johnny Isakson announced his retirement last year, followed Warnock into a multi-party primary to complete the last two years of a six-year term.
The Associated Press called for the second round in both contests, but did not call Georgia’s 16 presidential electoral votes.
Nationally, Republicans won 50 Senate seats compared to Democrats 48. Still, the GOP needs at least one of Georgia’s seats to get a majority in January. In a 50-50 Senate, Democrats would have the deciding vote in Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Rubio and Loeffler warned of dire consequences, even though Rubio implicitly conceded the hyperbole.
“To be fair, not all Democrats are socialists,” Rubio said. “But all socialists are democrats.”
Rubio alluded to the failed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, an independent who calls himself a Democratic Socialist and caucus with the Democrats in the Senate. Rubio nodded at progressive calls to “defund the police” and Democrats who support policies like single-payer “Medicare for All” or a tuition-free public university across the country.
“All the energy” and “all the money” of the Democratic Party, Rubio insisted, comes from these forces. Rubio did not mention Biden, who won the nomination and the presidency as an establishment figure promising bipartisanship and compromise.
Biden has often noted during his campaign that he beat Sanders and other more liberal nomination contestants. “He thinks he’s running against someone else,” Biden joked to Trump during an Oct. 22 debate when the president sought to label his challenger as a socialist.
Biden, for example, supports adding a “public option” public health care plan to existing insurance markets, but without ending private insurance. It supports significant public spending on green energy but opposes the will of progressives to quickly phase out fossil fuels.
Warnock and Ossoff have largely aligned with Biden’s agenda, especially a public option.
Clark, a spokesperson for Warnock, noted that Loeffler supports the GOP’s efforts to roll back the 2010 Affordable Care Act that prohibits insurers from discriminating against customers based on their medical history. It also accompanied her with the failure of the GOP-led Senate to pass yet another economic aid package for coronaviruses as millions of Americans face the loss of unemployment benefits, foreclosures and d evictions.
Republicans nonetheless double up after GOP Senate incumbents defeated well-funded challengers in more conservative states such as Iowa, Texas and Montana, while Republican challengers toppled several House Democrats who had won. moderate districts in 2018. Their bet is that Georgia, long a GOP stronghold before Biden’s performance in the presidential race, follows the same path.
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Associated Press reporters Jeff Amy and Ben Nadler contributed from Atlanta.
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