In case you missed the news, Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker is running for the Georgia Senate seat currently held by Democrat Raphael Warnock. The former star running back has assembled a campaign team that’s been doing some digging and looking for areas where they can run up some points on Warnock, a member without much of a paper trail from his brief time in the Senate. They may have struck pay dirt with a video of an interview that Warnock participated in back in 2020. The subject was energy and the green energy group he was speaking with wanted to know where the candidate stood on fossil fuels. Warnock seemed eager to please, saying that the country needs to “move away” from fossil fuels and that he was willing to look at the idea of a carbon tax to make that happen. With Georgia voters currently paying more for a tank of gasoline than most drivers can ever remember, that message may not sell very well in 2022. (Free Beacon)
In a newly unearthed video from 2020, Democratic senator Raphael Warnock (Ga.) said the United States needs to move away from using fossil fuels and that he’s open to discussing a carbon tax to get there.
Warnock was interviewed by Georgia Conservation Voters executive director Brionte McCorkle when he was asked whether he supports carbon tax legislation, according to the video posted on YouTube on May 1, 2020.
“I think we need to be moving away from an economy that’s based on fossil fuels, that’s the way of the past and we need to be moving toward the future,” said Warnock. “The issue of taxes and how much, that’s a conversation that I think I want to participate in, and I’ll bring my values and commitment to getting there to the conversation.”
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The price of a gallon of gas in Georgia reached $4.28 this week, setting an all-time record according to AAA. That’s the sort of thing people tend to notice and no amount of attempting to blame Vladimir Putin for it is going to be effective. In response, Warnock has been modifying his talking points, calling for a “gas tax holiday” and quieting his talk about “keeping it in the ground.”
But this video will serve as a stark reminder to the voters of where his real interests and priorities lie. Warnock sang the anti-fossil fuel song that his base wanted to hear during the Democratic primary that led to his current seat and that was in the very recent past. It’s going to be a tough sell for him to convince the voters that suddenly in the Drill Baby Drill camp now.
As recently as last August, Warnock voted against lifting Joe Biden’s ban on domestic oil and gas production on federal lands. He also cast more than one vote against moving the Keystone XL pipeline forward. Those facts will all be featured in a six-figure advertising campaign being launched by Walker’s team in the coming weeks.
It really shouldn’t take much effort to paint Warnock as being much further to the left than he tries to portray himself. He’s been a reliable vote for Joe Biden and the progressive wing of the party up and down the line. He can try to talk himself up as suddenly being a moderate on energy issues, but his record speaks for itself. I’m not sure how prepared a political rookie like Herschel Walker is to dive into this sort of fight, but he certainly has plenty of material to work with. If he can’t pull off a win in November, he’ll really only have himself to blame.
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