While top Republicans pleaded with people to get vaccinated, others downplayed the threat of a Covid-19 resurgence.
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GOP sees widening rift over promoting Covid shots
While top Republicans pleaded with people to get vaccinated, others downplayed the threat of a Covid-19 resurgence.
The Republican Party is being torn apart by the debate over whether to more aggressively promote Covid-19 vaccines, pitting those alarmed by the virus’ resurgence against a faction that has spent weeks sowing fear about the immunization push.
The deepening divide became apparent this week on Capitol Hill and across the party, with a contingent of prominent conservatives vocally advocating for the shots — even as others emphasized the need for the GOP to stick to principles of “individual liberty” and stay out of Americans’ medical decisions.
While top Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey pleaded with people to get vaccinated, others downplayed the threat of a Covid-19 resurgence — wary of angering a GOP base that views the sputtering vaccination effort as a political blow to President Joe Biden.
A news conference with Republican doctors in Congress, ostensibly to discuss the Delta variant, instead turned into a forum for the lawmakers to repeat unverified claims that the virus escaped from a lab in China, and to bash Democrats for not thoroughly investigating Covid’s origins.
“That is their choice,” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said when pressed about whether Republicans should urge people to get vaccinated. “It is our patriotic duty to care for other people, but it is also our patriotic duty to understand that we have individual rights in this country.”
That wariness among much of the Republican Party, borne out in 11 interviews with GOP policymakers, could further complicate the pandemic response as the Delta variant drives up case counts and hospitalizations while fewer Americans line up for shots. The deteriorating situation is likely to weigh heaviest on GOP voters: eight of the 10 states where Covid-19 hospitalizations were rising fastest are led by Republican governors.
After getting his first Covid-19 shot this week, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) repeatedly encouraged others to do the same. But given an opportunity Thursday to refute the vaccine safety fears fanned by prominent conservative skeptics, the chamber’s No. 2 GOP lawmaker demurred.
“I haven’t heard any conservatives raising doubts,” he said, a day after Charlie Kirk, co-founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, raised concerns about the vaccines’ safety on Fox News.
The posture has exasperated Biden administration officials and public health experts and hamstrung a vaccination effort that has so far reached 68 percent of American adults — below the target the White House had hoped to hit nearly three weeks ago.
Daily vaccination rates have dropped steadily, with the U.S. averaging fewer than a half-million shots a day since July Fourth. And after Republicans seized on President Joe Biden’s vow to go “door to door” to encourage vaccinations to falsely suggest the government would track those who refuse to get the shot, administration officials say they’re struggling to bridge an ever-widening partisan divide.
“This has profound consequences,” a senior administration official said of the hostility within parts of the GOP. “You’re putting people in harm’s way, and this is damn serious. This is as serious as we’ve been at.”
The faltering vaccine campaign — combined with a rapid comeback of the virus that’s almost exclusively hit unvaccinated Americans — have convinced some notable Republicans to ratchet up their pro-vaccine rhetoric.
McConnell has on multiple occasions promoted the shots, at one point decrying “all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.” On Friday, Ivey said “it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” after her state suffered a steep acceleration in Covid-19 cases.
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