Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) has now spoken out about the damaging impacts of behavior by his Republican colleagues after Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have created an independent commission to investigate the January Capitol riot. Because of Senate procedural rules, the agreement of 60 Senators in the 100-member chamber is required to move forward and to a final vote on most legislation, and only 54 Senators — including six Republicans (two Democrats were absent) — backed moving forward with the riot investigation bill.
Sen. Raphael Warnock on the Republican blockade of the Jan. 6 commission: "All of us are here as representatives of a democracy that folks on the other side have decided they're not willing to defend."https://t.co/k7fLoYiD9R
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 1, 2021
Saying that he thinks “there were some people who slept through the civil rights movement, quite frankly, who didn’t understand that in a real sense it was a fight to save the country,” Warnock added that the country is now “in a renewed, 21st-century fight to defend our democracy so that we might pass on a future that’s worthy of all our children.” Most Republican leaders have not met the magnitude of the circumstances. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) even recently told reporters that “100 percent” of his “focus is on standing up to this administration” — rather than, say, advancing the interests of the American people.
As Warnock added:
‘All of us are here as representatives of a democracy that folks on the other side have decided they’re not willing to defend. Some things ought to be bigger than politics. This is about truth… It’s ironic that this would happen [on Memorial Day] weekend, because all of us will go back to our home districts, and we will celebrate great patriots who paid the ultimate price to defend our democracy on bloody battlefields, and we have politicians who are not even willing to stand up on the Senate floor for what’s obviously right.’
As Republicans across the country attempt to implement tough new voting restrictions — partly under the cover of the lie from former President Donald Trump that there were systematic security problems with last year’s election — Warnock also observed that “what we are witnessing in this moment is a historic abandonment of that basic democratic framework” which has previously guided the nation. Republicans are, by and large, not responding to actual documented problems with their newly put forward voting restrictions around the nation — they’re just making it harder to vote.
Warnock was first elected earlier this year to serve for the remainder of the final term of Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, who retired. He’ll have to go before the voters again next year to win a full six-year term, but he’s a slight favorite to win, according to the Cook Political Report.
