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GOP Elephant
The Republican claim of being pro-life has always been dubious at best since they’ve never shown any interest in improving the lives of the overwhelming majority of Americans after they are born. Now their continuing war on public health has taken a life-threatening new turn.
What began as a deliberate Republican attempt to prevent President Biden from successfully defeating the deadly coronavirus and rebuilding a thriving national economy for all Americans has grown into something even uglier and deadlier.
Republican leaders were so buoyed by their success in spreading irrational fears in the rightwing media about the well-tested, lifesaving COVID vaccines Biden made freely available to all Americans, they see no reason to stop there. They’ve broadened their attacks on public health protections to include all mask and vaccine mandates including compulsory childhood vaccinations that for generations have effectively stopped the spread of infectious diseases.
Public Health is Illegal?
“NO VACCINE MANDATES!” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy shouted on Twitter. State laws and executive orders banning vaccine and mask mandates from dangerously extreme Republican governors like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have made their states national leaders in covid deaths. In addition to outlawing mandates protecting public health, DeSantis levied an enormous $3.5 million fine against a county school system for challenging the law to provide safe schools for its children and teachers.
The Republican battle cry for destroying life-saving health protections in a pandemic is they’re protecting American liberty. They clearly don’t understand the concept.
Vaccine mandates in America literally began with the nation’s birth in January 1777 when General George Washington ordered all Continental Army soldiers inoculated for smallpox. The U.S. Supreme Court defined American liberty when it declared mandatory vaccinations constitutional in 1905. Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote: The Constitution “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, in all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. Real liberty for all could not exist. . . regardless of injury to others.”
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Wrong Side of History (Again)
Republicans are often accused of being on the wrong side of history as the nation continues to broaden the concept of democracy to provide equal rights and protections for all Americans but being more than two centuries out-of-date is ridiculous. The increasingly dangerous new version of the Republican Party embracing lawless violence to overturn free and fair elections is certainly out of step with the majority of Americans.
Shocking evidence of the power of rightwing disinformation discouraging vaccinations against covid even among those who should know better is that in more than 2,000 hospitals and health care facilities nationwide voluntarily reporting vaccination rates last month, one in four health care workers remained unvaccinated. More than 40% of hospitals have now issued vaccine mandates. More will join them with the Biden administration now drafting vaccination mandates for all health care facilities accepting Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Most Americans have been eager for government approval of booster shots of whatever covid vaccine they originally received six months ago. Most parents are understandably desperate to get approval of vaccines for children under 12 who have been left defenseless against the life-threatening conditions Republicans want to impose upon their schools. Republicans, who once claimed to be family-friendly, now deserve a special place in hell for endangering the lives of children.
Nothing Conservative Here
Like their past president, Republicans no longer have any coherent conservative principles. Texas Gov. Abbott even reversed his long-standing opposition to government regulations on business to issue his own executive order banning all private businesses from adopting vaccine or mask mandates.
Republicans are callously indifferent to the rising death toll from the latest surge of the pandemic that is much greater among their own unvaccinated supporters in red states than it is for those with more protection in well-vaccinated blue states. They’re playing a cynically cruel long game.
The political calculation by Republicans is if Biden fails to end the pandemic and restore a robust American economy, it will be a lot easier for Republicans to win elections in 2022 and 24. Continuing to kill more Americans will all be worth it for them if Republicans can win congressional control and the presidency again.
The whole ugly sabotage of the American economy could fall apart, of course, if Democrats get their act together to pass as much of Biden’s transformational Build Back Better recovery program as possible. It shouldn’t be so hard to pass a comprehensive package of extremely popular legislation at a time when it’s desperately needed.
Republicans are trying to scare everyone about the cost, but it can all be paid for over the next 10 years simply by requiring the wealthy to start paying their fair share in taxes. Most of us who are vaccinated will still be around to enjoy a new, improved economy that benefits all Americans and not just a privileged few at the top.
