As a new coronavirus wave accelerated by the Delta variant spreads across the United States, many Republican governors have taken sweeping action to combat what they see as an even more urgent danger posed by the pandemic: the threat to personal freedom.In Florida, Ron DeSantis has prevented local governments and school districts from enacting mask mandates and battled in court over compliance. In Texas, Greg Abbott has followed a similar playbook, renewing an order last week to ban vaccine mandates.And in South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who like Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Abbott is a potential 2024 candidate for president, has made her blanket opposition to lockdowns and mandates a key selling point. Arriving by horseback and carrying the American flag, she advertised the state’s recent Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew half a million people, as a beacon of liberty.Ms. Noem brushed aside criticism from Democrats and public health experts about the gathering, which was followed by a local Covid spike, saying on Fox News that the left was “accusing us of embracing death when we’re just allowing people to make personal choices.”The actions of Republican governors, some of the leading stewards of the country’s response to the virus, reveal how the politics of the party’s base have hardened when it comes to curbing Covid. As some Republican-led states, including Florida, confront their most serious outbreaks yet, even rising death totals are being treated as less politically damaging than imposing coronavirus mandates of almost any stripe.“Freedom is good policy and good politics,” Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and ally of Mr. Abbott’s who has introduced federal legislation to end mask decrees and to forbid federal vaccine passports, said in an interview.Mr. DeSantis has become a symbolic face of the battle, as President Biden has urged Republican governors opposed to mandates to at least “get out of the way.” This week, Mr. DeSantis’s education commissioner withheld funds from two school districts that made masks mandatory.Most top Republicans, including every Republican governor, have been vaccinated and have encouraged others to do so. But most have also stopped short of supporting inoculation requirements and have opposed masking requirements.In many ways, Republican leaders are simply following Republican voters.Skepticism about masks, vaccines and the rules governing them is increasingly intertwined with the cultural issues that dominate the modern Republican Party. The fear over losing “medical freedom” has become part of the broader worry that “cancel culture” is coming for conservatives’ way of life.And while opposing pandemic edicts is a limited-government stance, the forceful approach of governors is at odds with the long-held principle of local control, making it the latest Republican Party orthodoxy to be cast aside since the beginning of the Trump era, along with free trade and limited spending.ImageGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wants to open antibody treatment sites for those who contract the coronavirus.Credit...Andrew West/The News-Press, via Associated PressThe intensifying conservative mistrust of the news media and opposition to the directives of elite institutions and experts — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is now so reviled by some that Mr. DeSantis sold merchandise saying “Don’t Fauci My Florida” — have cleaved the country into two factions guided by alternative sets of beliefs.One outlier among Republican governors is Larry Hogan, a moderate who leads Democratic-dominated Maryland. He recently required that hospital and nursing home employees be vaccinated.“Frankly, it’s confusing to me as to why some of my colleagues are mandating why you can’t wear masks, or mandating that businesses can’t make their own decisions about vaccines, or mandating that school systems can’t make decisions for themselves,” Mr. Hogan said in an interview. “And then they’re talking about freedom? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”The pandemic, public health officials say, is now largely one of the unvaccinated, and the virus is raging particularly in conservative states with far lower inoculation rates and more relaxed attitudes toward group gatherings. Of the 10 states with the most cases per capita in recent days, nine voted Republican in last year’s presidential race and nine are led by Republican governors, according to The New York Times coronavirus database.Republican leaders’ posture, particularly on keeping schools from requiring masks, does not appear popular across the wider electorate. In Florida, a Quinnipiac poll released last week found that 60 percent of residents supported compulsory masks in schools.But among Republicans, that figure was inverted: 72 percent of Mr. DeSantis’s party said they opposedBy: Shane Goldmacher
Title: G.O.P. Governors Fight Mandates as the Party’s Covid Politics Harden
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/us/politics/republican-governors-covid-19.html
Published Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:15:55 +0000
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