Last week, several folks tweeted out that the change among some Republicans and media right wingers away from anti-vaccination rhetoric smelled a lot like there was very bad polling news for the GOP behind it. It was clearly coordinated - or one of history's biggest coincidences - when in the span of 24 hours so many right wingers made seemingly pro-vaccine messages. That's not a conclusion that requires a degree in rocket science to come up with - in fact, I tweeted nearly the same message and I am the farthest thing from a rocket scientist. It was a strange period since it was largely BS, but that's not the message that got out. The right wingers who made seemingly pro-vaccine messages knew that this would be what would make news - and the coordinated messages seemed fairly obviously framed as political messaging, not health messaging. This is underscored by the number of the who qualified or walked back statements shortly afterward or - in the case of white supremacist mouthpiece Tucker Carlson - did so during the same program/event as the "pro-vaccine" message.
Not a few folks were sure this was all about legal liability. Others thought it had to do with the impact of the Delta variant surge on right wingers' stock portfolios. I can't speak to the latter, but the former has to be true. Why? Because there are class action lawsuits brewing as we speak. And if I know that, Fox News knows that. However, the legal liability is more serious for media defendants than politicians. Since Fox holds itself out as a news source, it is going to have a very difficult time defending an essential prong of a coming lawsuit - that its audience relied on the information they provided them. Sure, news sources can be wrong. But if they are providing knowingly false information to their audience, knowing - or at least intending - that the audience will believe it, and reliance on the information can foreseeably result in injury and death, well that is a completely different thing than being wrong.
I don't believe legal liability is what driving Republican officials to change their tune about the vaccines. I think there a political motivation in the GOP vaccine switcheroo. Perhaps the GOP does not have internal polling numbers showing they are in trouble on this issue, but the motivation is still political. Republican officials are not immune from hearing vaccinated constituents getting increasingly angry that they did the right thing for themselves and the public by getting the jab and yet people choosing not to be responsible are making this pandemic stretch out and expecting vaccinated persons to just deal with it. And then, there is the very real, albeit morbid, issue of the death toll on the unvaccinated. Right wing anti-vax rhetoric is contributing to literally killing off the Republican base. And another very real political problem for the GOP is discussed by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo. Older age groups are more vaccinated than younger age groups and they are getting frustrated by the anti-vax rhetoric and the refusal of Republican officials to do anything (and even worse to outlaw solutions like masking mandates). While the polling is showing that white Republicans are by large margins refusing to be vaccinated more than any other group, the ones who are vaccinated are in age groups typically favorable to Republicans in elections. And they are in danger of turning against the GOP over this. It's a perfect storm of political trouble for the Republican Party. They need to appeal to their increasingly insane base who refuse to be vaccinated (even though a lot of them seemed willing to try drinking bleach or a malaria treatment that would not work on COVID) while trying to reassure their vaccinated supporters and independents that they can be responsible leaders.
Here are some important excerpts from Marshall's article. The entire article is worth your attention; please read it. It will only take a few minutes of your time.
"Among the vaccinated there’s a growing realization that we’re going backwards, seeing rates go up, seeing some mask mandates come back because of the non-vaccinated. And people are getting frustrated. That is a big part of why you’re seeing Republicans not simply encouraging people to get vaccinated but even more trying to ditch the vaccine-resistant brand. They’re feeling exposed to shifting public opinion. In short, they don’t want to be accountable for what they’ve done.
"To understand the politics, we need to take a different look at the numbers. We’re used to hearing the rather disappointing fact that even months into the vaccination drive and with surplus vaccines everywhere only just under half (49.1%) the US population is vaccinated. Epidemiologically, that’s bad news. But it looks different from an electoral perspective. 60% of adults (over 18) are vaccinated and fully 69% have received at least one dose. Shift our perspective in this way and you see that when you’re talking about the political nation, a big, verging on overwhelming majority are vaccinated. Among people over 65, the group that votes most consistently, 80% are vaccinated. Furthermore there is a lot of evidence that vaccination rates escalate with age. People in their forties are substantially more vaccinated than people in their twenties. So higher rates of vaccination align with propensity to vote.
...
"Most elected Republicans haven’t been explicitly anti-vaccination. Indeed, even before the last couple weeks many have made low volume statements saying they’ve been vaccinated and encouraging others to do so. But they’ve almost all participated in the effort to make vaccine resistance into a kind of freedom movement – banning government or private businesses from using vaccine passports, banning mask mandates, politicizing debates over school reopenings. As a party they’ve leaned into valorizing vaccine resistance and banning any private or governmental efforts to place the burden of the consequences of non-vaccination on those who choose not to be vaccinated.
"They thought that would supercharge their already happy prospects for 2022 by riding an anti-vax or anti-vax mandate wave. And now they’re thinking they may have miscalculated."
As we return to lockdowns and masking mandates - and as more vaccinated folks get exposed or sick from unvaccinated folks - this could become a serious problem for the Republicans in 2022. It won’t help that there will be a full and public investigation into the January 6th coup attempt and that more figures from Trumpland, including the former president himself, are entangled in criminal prosecutions.