By
Last summer, as Democrats and public health officials promoted safe, free, and effective vaccines as a way to end the pandemic, several prominent Republicans concocted a strange, new conspiracy theory. As some in the GOP saw it, Democrats said they wanted to end the pandemic, but that was merely a ruse.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, for example, published a tweet complaining about mask policies, saying it had been “conjured up by liberal government officials who want to continue to live in a perpetual pandemic state.” Soon after, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn added, “The left likes lockdowns because it gives them control. They would like to have a permanent pandemic.”
All of this was, of course, demonstrably ridiculous. If the left wanted the pandemic to last indefinitely, it wouldn’t advocate for policies that would end the pandemic faster.
Six months later, as Democratic governors start rolling back and loosening Covid restrictions, common sense suggests Republicans would be delighted. Instead, much of the GOP is complaining that Democrats are somehow insincere about their own policies.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered floor remarks yesterday, rebuking Democrats, not for scaling back Covid restrictions, but for scaling back Covid restrictions for the wrong reasons.
“Now, obviously, the scientific facts have not changed in the last few weeks.... The only science that’s changed in the last two weeks is the political science. The only data that’s changed in the last two weeks is Democrats’ polling data.”
As a quantitative matter, the Kentucky Republican is clearly wrong. Two weeks ago, according to The New York Times’ tally, the daily national average for new infections was over 425,000. Now, it’s about 155,000. Hospitalization numbers have also improved dramatically.
Reasonable observers can debate the relative merits of assorted Covid-19 restrictions, but the idea that “the only data that’s changed in the last two weeks is Democrats’ polling data” is plainly at odds with the real-world circumstances policymakers are confronting.
But even putting the data aside, what’s surprising is the fact that Republicans who want to see a rollback on restrictions are admonishing Democratic officials who are rolling back restrictions. As Jon Chait recently noted, this has become especially common in conservative media.
“This is not about science — this is about Democrats looking at polls and panicking at their diminishing midterm prospects,” claims the Washington Examiner. “Why are we seeing this shift now? The science has not changed, but perhaps the internal polling has,” surmises the American Spectator. “Only one circumstance has changed, and it has nothing to do with science and data — unless the science was an experiment to test parents’ patience and the data is the number of infuriated Americans calling B.S. on Democrats’ twisted games,” charges the Federalist. “The thing that’s changed is the calendar year. It’s 2022, and Democrats are beginning to evaluate the numbers: the number of months left until November.”
The evolution of the complaints is more than a little jarring: Some on the right were outraged that Democrats wanted “a permanent pandemic” in which public health officials controlled our daily lives, which gave way to new conservative outrage that Democrats don’t want a permanent pandemic.
It’s certainly possible that political and electoral considerations have influenced some policymakers’ decisions, but the larger truth is straightforward: Democrats supported more safeguards when the public health conditions warranted them, and many Democrats are now moving away from the safeguards as conditions improve.