theatlantic | Biden’s bet, while risky, grows more solid by the day. Republicans are making a counterargument that they believe their base wants to hear, which would be fine if their base were sufficient to wrest control of Congress from the Democrats. Biden is trying to appeal to a wider audience. Two of the most prized voting blocs in an election—suburban and independent voters—favor Biden’s vaccine-mandate plan by solid margins. They don’t see the vaccine requirement as government overreach; for them, it’s a step toward reentering a world they remember from two years ago.
“Republicans could be making a real mistake on the long-term play on this issue, especially heading into the midterms,” Rob Stutzman, a longtime Republican strategist based in California, told me. “Voters are looking at this through a personal lens, not a political lens. If I’m vaccinated, I’m really annoyed that we’ve had a second surge that was made worse because of the unvaccinated. And I’m annoyed because that means I have to put a mask back on and I have kids in school who are now at risk.”
Twenty years ago, after hijacked planes brought down the World Trade Center and blew a hole in the Pentagon, George W. Bush signed the PATRIOT Act, making it easier for the federal government to surveil Americans in the name of national security. Enough Americans were traumatized by the events of 9/11 to make that sort of encroachment on civil liberties palatable, so long as it meant the government would safeguard them from another terrorist attack. Over the years, the trade-off proved a devil’s bargain, as government watchdogs have chronicled abuses of privacy that had nothing to do with foiling another attack on U.S. soil.
Biden’s vaccine mandates are more grounded in American tradition. George Washington ordered that his Continental Army be inoculated against smallpox while fighting the British during the Revolutionary War. Schools have long required vaccinations for diseases such as polio. “Nobody wants the government to tell you what to do,” says Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican pollster who has shared some of his research on COVID-19 with the White House. “But—and this is a big but—they’re even more afraid of the government allowing people who are standing beside them, traveling with them, working with them, and partying with them to give them COVID.’’
In the Reagan era, much of Republican identity was bound up in support for business and lower taxes. But the threshold question these days for Republicans looking to rise within the party is their fealty to Donald Trump. A strong argument can be made that Biden’s plan is helpful to businesses and the larger economy, and something that, in less polarized times, Republicans might have actually embraced. People are less likely to go to a movie theater if they fear that the couple eating popcorn in the seats next to them might be unvaccinated. They are less likely to attend a conference—injecting money into both the local and national economies through airfare, hotels, car services, and meals—if others in the crowd are unvaccinated.
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